Consumers Concerned About Massive Funeral Home Chain Merger

The Funeral Consumers Alliance recently warned the FTC thatHouston-based Service Corporation International’s $1.4 billion acquisition ofStewart Enterprises would give it control over more than 2,000 funeral homesand cemeteries nationwide, making it the largest of such operators andpresumably leading to diminished competition, higher prices, and deterioratingservice.

The average full-service funeral costs over $7,000, and thealliance worries SCI will only increase prices now that it faces even lesscompetition.  The alliance also notes SCIhas a poor track record of customer abuse, from “lying about options in orderto boost the funeral bill, to digging up graves to re-sell them to anotherunsuspecting family, to denying the legal rights of LGBT people to make funeralarrangements for their partners.”  SCIalso recently spent $100 million to settle a grave-desecration class action.

See David Lee, Funeral Chain Merger Draws Consumer Protest,Courthouse News Service, July 15,2013.