The Federal Trade Commission is exploring possible steps to strengthen and modernize the Funeral Rule, which requires funeral providers to give in-person visitors price information to make informed decisions. The FTC also released a staff report that found that fewer than 40 percent of the funeral provider websites the agency reviewed provide any prices online.
“For decades, the Funeral Rule has provided crucial rights to grieving families seeking out burial and cremation services,” said Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “We look forward to hearing from the public about how we can modernize the rule to better protect consumers in today’s market.”
The Funeral Rule requires funeral providers to furnish consumers who visit funeral homes in-person with itemized price information. But, because the rule was first issued in the 1980s, it does not require them to provide price information online and via other electronic means like email or text messages.
The agency’s review of funeral providers’ websites – which took place during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when many people could not or did not feel comfortable visiting a funeral home in person to make arrangements for their loved ones – found that more than 60 percent of the websites reviewed provided little to no information about their prices.
On February 14, 2020, the Commission initiated a routine review of the rule, which received 785 comments….
