Hey, my uncle's family bought his coffin at Costco, believe it or not. It was a hell of a lot cheaper than buying one from a funeral home. It looked very nice and the quality seemed great, but really, all it had to do was stay together from the viewing to being lowered into the ground. Let me just say he had no complaints.
When I was young, my great aunt passed away. My grandfather made sure I saw all the behind the scenes funeral prep stuff. At one point I was asked if I had any questions. I pointed to the sign on the casket and asked if anyone ever tried to cash in on the casket's 50 year warranty.
ReplyDeleteYou laugh, but its a shameless industry preying on weak folks. My sister is estate executor, she is using a funeral home near her (1 hour away). Charging over $8k for a friggin cremation. No, we're not getting a fancy urn or anything, woden box for the ashes.
ReplyDeleteLocal shop quoted me 3500, but the one she chose is run by some 'friends'.
Scumbags are everywhere.
That sounds like a ripoff, i arranged my uncles funeral about two months ago, we had a funeral with coffin, vault etc for about $8500, cremation should be cheaper overall
DeleteI paid just over 2,000 for my brother's cremation. Ashes in heavy-duty plastic bag inside a cardboard box.
DeleteThere's a black arm hanging onto that corpse container, so they're on their way to Chicago to pick up a relative.
ReplyDeleteAre you assuming that coffin is empty?
ReplyDeleteWhen we buried my dad, he had already gone to the local to him (at the time) funeral parlor to look for a casket, and was actually given one that they couldn't sell because it had been purchased by someone who later died and was buried out of state. Dad just had to store it for a few years. This was in WV. We had actually brought him down to FL to a nursing home (dementia, we were unable to give him the care he needed in the very end of it, although we tried) for the last two years of his life, so we had to get him back to WV to bury him on my brother's property.
ReplyDeleteThe funeral home put him in a cardboard box that looked like a big file box, we threw some dry ice in with him, and my brother and I drove up in my van, with our wives and my kid following in our car. We got up there and buried him right where he had picked out years before my brother even bought the property. The funeral home here in FL charged us a hair over a thousand dollars to pick him up from the nursing home and get all the paperwork in order for us to transport him. The local Publix actually had sold out of the dry ice, but the manager found some in another store and brought it to the funeral home, and didn't even charge us.
People were very nice and helpful, it was amazing. Oh, and the funeral home that had given him the casket actually transferred him from the filing cabinet to the casket for us, free of charge. My wife said it was the most hillbilly thing she'd ever seen me do, and that was saying something.
I'm sure funeral homes only buy the finest particle board coffins and put together with the best staples and Elmer's glue money can buy, far superior to the particle board coffins Costco sells.
ReplyDeleteWhen I go, just burn me and get it over with.