WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) — The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced April 18 that it has found failures to disclose funeral home pricing information at 29 of the 134 funeral homes its investigators visited while working undercover in 2017.
The investigators visited 11 states last year to assess compliance with the FTC’s Funeral Rule, which gives certain rights to consumers who are making funeral arrangements. The rule includes a mandate that funeral homes provide an itemized price list at the start of any discussion with a client in person. Before showing consumers caskets, funeral home businesses must provide a casket price list. These providers also must allow consumers to buy items individually. They cannot force consumers to buy an item, such as a casket, as a condition of obtaining other funeral services or goods.
The FTC enacted the Funeral Rule Offender’s Program (FROP) in 1996, which allows firs- time offenders of the Funeral Rule to enter a training program to increase compliance with the rule.
Since FROP was enacted, the FTC has inspected nearly 3,200 funeral homes, finding violations in 559 of them.