What it costs
The price list you are owed
A printed list of everything a funeral home sells, by category, with the price beside each line. You are owed one at the start of the conversation rather than at the end of it, and it is yours to take away.
What it is, and the moment it has to be in your hands
It is called a general price list. Not a brochure and not a folder of packages: a plain printed document, every item the funeral home sells, by category, with a figure against each one.
The moment it must be given to you is the part most families never hear. It is handed over at the start of any discussion of arrangements, of goods, or of prices — before the conversation rather than at the end of it, and whether or not you asked. It is yours to keep. You may take it home, show it to somebody who is thinking more clearly than you are, and put it beside another funeral home's. Nobody may ask for it back.
Two more lists exist alongside it. One is for caskets and one is for outer burial containers, and each is put in your hands before you are shown a single casket or container. That order is the whole point: the first thing you see should be the range of prices rather than the display. It is much harder to ask what the plain one costs while standing in front of the polished one.
And you can have prices over the telephone. You do not have to give your name, explain who has died, or come in. Ask what something costs and any funeral home in the United States has to tell you.
The categories, with nothing beside them
The names are standard, which is the only reason two funeral homes can be compared
The same items appear under the same headings in the same order on every list, so two of them can be read side by side, straight down. Learning the sixteen names below is most of what it takes to read one properly.
| On the list | What it is |
|---|---|
| Basic services of the funeral director and staff | The overhead: being reachable at night, the arranging, the filings, the permits, the coordination. This is the one you cannot decline. |
| Embalming | Optional. Not ordinarily required by law. |
| Other preparation of the body | Washing, dressing, hairdressing, cosmetic care. Separate from embalming and available without it. |
| Use of facilities and staff for a viewing | Priced by the session, usually an afternoon or an evening. |
| Use of facilities and staff for a funeral service | The chapel here. |
| Use of facilities and staff for a memorial service | The same rooms, without the body present. |
| Use of equipment and staff for a graveside service | The canopy, the chairs, the matting, and the people who set them out. |
| Transfer of the person into our care | The first journey. Priced separately because the distance varies. |
| Hearse | |
| Cars for the family | Optional, and increasingly declined. |
| Caskets | On their own printed list, which we hand you before you see a single casket. |
| Outer burial containers | On their own printed list too. Whether one is needed at all is the cemetery's rule, not ours. |
| Forwarding to another funeral home | A single price for our half of an out-of-state arrangement. |
| Receiving from another funeral home | The other direction. |
| Direct cremation | A single price, with the alternative container included. |
| Immediate burial | A single price, without a viewing or ceremony. |
Read down the left column first and find the lines that belong to the arrangement you actually want. A family choosing cremation with no viewing is looking at a handful of rows, not at all of them, and the rest of the page is somebody else's funeral.
Then compare like with like. The last four rows on that list are single prices for a whole arrangement, which makes them the easiest honest comparison between two funeral homes: one number each, with what it includes printed beside it.
What comes with the list
The rest of what the same rules give you
The list is the first of them. These are the others, and they hold whether you are arranging a burial with everything in it or the least expensive thing on the page.
- A price over the telephone. You do not have to give your name, and you do not have to come in. Ask, and any funeral home has to answer.
- A printed price list, to keep. Handed to you at the start of any conversation about arrangements, goods or prices — before the discussion, not after it, and it is yours to take away and compare.
- A separate list for caskets and for outer containers. Given to you before you are shown any, so the first thing you see is the range and not the display.
- The right to buy only what you want. You may decline any item on the list except the basic services fee, and no funeral home may refuse to sell you the rest.
- The right to supply your own casket or urn. Bought anywhere. No funeral home may charge you a handling fee for it or refuse to use it.
- An itemised statement before you pay. Every item you have chosen, what each costs, and what the total is, in writing, before any money changes hands.
- No compulsory embalming. It is not ordinarily required by law, and no funeral home may tell you that it is when it is not.
- No casket for a direct cremation. A funeral home that offers direct cremation has to make an alternative container available and may not tell you a casket is required.
What is missing from the table above, said plainly
No prices on this site. There is no price anywhere on this site, and that is deliberate. This is a demonstration and any figure here would be invented — a made-up price for a funeral is worse than none, because somebody would plan against it. What a real funeral home owes you is a printed list you can take away.
A real general price list has a figure beside every line in that table. This one has none, on purpose. Woodside Memorial is a demonstration: the building is generated, the people are invented, the telephone number is a placeholder, and any figure printed here would be invented too. A made-up funeral price is worse than no price at all, because somebody in the first day after a death would carry it away and plan against it.
What survives without the numbers is the shape, and the shape is the useful half. The categories are real, the order they are printed in is real, the moment the list has to be handed over is real, and so is every entitlement above it. When somebody puts a real one in your hands, you will know what you are holding and what ought to be beside each line.
If you would rather ask than read
Prices over the telephone, without giving a name and without coming in. That is not a concession, it is what you are entitled to from anybody in this trade.