Eight years ago, a woman in Connecticut buried her late husband on their 8-acre property, where previous owners had been interring the dead for generations. But her subsequent attempt to make sure this was all okay with local authorities has led her on a legal wild goose chase all the way to the state Supreme Court — and now all the way back to where she started. [More]
Court Tells 82-Year-Old She Wasted 8 Years Fighting For Right To Bury Husband On Her Property
By August 23, 2012
Broken Seat Belt And Massive Customer Service Failure Mean I Miss Grandpa’s Funeral
By July 25, 2012
Elizabeth missed her grandfather’s funeral because of a broken seat belt. Well, that’s not entirely true. United Airlines claimed that there was a broken seat belt on the plane she was supposed to take from Chicago to Savannah, then kept pushing back and ultimately canceled the flight. By the time they finally canceled the flight, there were no more flights to Savannah for days. A broken co-pilot seat belt and a massive customer service failure is what kept Elizabeth and other passengers in Chicago. [More]
Cemetery: You Paid For The Crypt But You Didn’t Pay For Us To Put You In it
By July 16, 2012
A couple in New Jersey thought they had made the final payment on their prepaid funeral arrangements 30 years ago. That is, until the cemetery called to tell them they still owed more than $2,000 if they ever hoped to actually be entombed in the crypt they had purchased. [More]
Close Up Loved One's Accounts After They Pass Away
By October 7, 2011
If the responsibility has fallen on your shoulders to close up the accounts and cancel the contracts of a loved one who passed away, it can be a painful, slow, and confusing process. Here are 9 tips to make it go smoother. [More]
Is This Flower Arrangement Worth $200?
By September 1, 2011
After a coworker’s mother passed away, J’s officemates chipped in to buy a very large, very pretty flower arrangement for the viewing. It cost around $200. While delivery and overhead are substantial in the flower industry, they didn’t expect to find that this pitiful thing had been sent in place of the massive arrangement they ordered. [More]
It's Not American Airlines' Problem That Your Mom Died
By July 7, 2011
Rita’s mother recently passed away. We offer our condolences to Rita and her family, and our rage to the American Airlines employees who were complete jerks to Rita as she tried to travel from Texas to the distant Canadian city of Halifax, Nova Scotia for the funeral. After her first flight was twice delayed due to “mechanical problems,” she wound up stranded in Orlando. Missing her connection due to the two delays wasn’t the airline’s problem, a supervisor told Rita. [More]
Funeral Home Offers Drive-Thru Grieving
By April 18, 2011
Fries, liquor and prescription medications have long been offered in drive-thru form, so it was only a matter of time until funeral homes followed suit. [More]
Save Money: Get Married In A Funeral Home
By January 19, 2011
Superficially, weddings and funerals have a lot in common: everyone’s dressed up, families get together, some people are crying, and the guests of honor ride off in fancy vehicle to an uncertain future. Funeral homes, though, are large and beautiful spaces that provide a cheaper alternative site for wedding receptions and/or ceremonies. [More]
Prepaid Funeral Trust Money Used For Conventions And Lobbying, Say Auditors
By July 12, 2010
We’ve said repeatedly that prepaid funeral plans are bunk–the industry is too unregulated to be trustworthy, and it’s far too easy to lose money when you could just as easily set up a savings plan for a funeral on your own. Now there’s news from California that the state’s second-largest prepaid funeral trust was spending money “improperly” on everything from political lobbying to conventions, blowing $12.6 million from the $70 million paid in advance by customers. [More]
Funeral Home Director Accused Of Partying Pretty Hard
By June 16, 2010
The Ohio state board that licenses funeral homes has shut down a business in the town of Findlay while it investigates a list of allegations against the funeral director who owns the business. It’s a long list, too, including being naked or half-clothed during business hours, putting on the jacket of a deceased man in front of the man’s family, threatening employees, and being drunk. [More]
FTC Catches 30% Of Funeral Homes Violating Consumer Laws
By March 25, 2010
Thanks to the Federal Trade Commission, consumers have certain rights when it comes to funerals. Consumers have the right to purchase only the products or services they need, to use the services of a funeral home while declining embalming, to see written price lists before they begin to make decisions, and the right to purchase a casket or urn elsewhere. An undercover FTC investigation, however, discovered that in 30% of the funeral homes they visited, at least one part of the Funeral Rule of 1984 was violated. [More]
Internet Explorer 6 Takes A Dirt Nap
By March 8, 2010
Aten Design Group of Denver hosted a funeral for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 last week, after Google Docs and Google Sites stopped supporting the browser. YouTube will drop IE 6 — released in 2001 — Saturday. CNN reports the story of IE 6′s sendoff: [More]
Websites Offer After Death Services For Your Online Life
By February 26, 2010
If you don’t want all your various online accounts left unattended when you permanently go off the grid, you can now hire several different services to clean up any loose ends–closing accounts, sharing passwords with survivors, transferring gaming accounts, and so on. Wired says they cost anywhere from $10 a year to $300 for a lifetime account, although after reading about this you may find it’s cheaper and more efficient to just add the necessary info to your will. [More]
Consumers Opting For Cremations Over Costly Funerals
By February 26, 2010
The Grim Reaper wears hand-me-downs; the Great Recession is forcing more people to opt for cheaper cremations over costly funerals. [WSJ via Clusterstock] [More]
Costco Ships Your Mom's Casket To Houston, But The Funeral Is In New Jersey
By January 22, 2010
D.’s mother passed away last week. The funeral is today, and the wake was yesterday. He writes that thanks to Costco and their supplier Universal Casket, the casket that he ordered with expedited shipping was somehow shipped to a different city entirely, leaving the family scrambling for a new casket at the last minute, and defeating the entire purpose of ordering a casket by mail order in the first place. Costco did reach out and make things right, but not until later. [More]
Walmart Won't Let Family Print Photos Of Dead Relative For Funeral
By November 18, 2009
After the death of a relative, Mike put together a photo tribute for the funeral, in order to “remember the good times,” he says. Only a Walmart cashier put a stop to his purchase. Here’s what happened. Do you think Walmart was in the right?
Even In Death, You Can Still Shop At Walmart
By October 29, 2009
Walmart now provides for their customers from cradle to grave. Quite literally—since you can not only purchase cribs there, you can now order caskets and funerary urns from the mega-retailer’s Web site.
Congressman Introduces Bill To Oversee Cemeteries
By September 22, 2009
Remember Burr Oak this past summer? That was the Chicago cemetery that dug up bodies and resold the graves to new customers. Well, yesterday a U.S. Representative from Illinois introduced the Bereaved Consumers Protection Act, a bill that would standardize record-keeping, make cemeteries accountable to federal officials as well as state, and protect consumers from shady business practices.
