Comparing funeral-home quotes

What this page is for #

Funeral homes rarely post prices, and the cost of the same set of services can differ a good deal between them. The page — headed Compare funeral-home quotes — gives you somewhere to put the figures as you collect them, so you can see them beside each other instead of holding four phone calls in your head.

Every number on it is one you typed, taken from that home's own quote. As the page itself puts it: using your own numbers, never ours.

Adding a home #

+ Add a funeral home opens a form with:

• Funeral home name
• Phone (optional)
• a service type, with the hint e.g., "Traditional burial", "Direct cremation"
• the line items — professional fees, facility fees, casket or urn, cemetery plot, embalming, transport, and anything else
• Notes (optional)

Fill in only what the quote in front of you actually gives. A blank line is simply a line they did not price.

Each home you add can be changed with Edit or taken off with Remove. Everything saves as you go.

Reading the comparison #

Once there is more than one home, a Side-by-side comparison table appears, listing each Line item down the side and a Total for each home. Before you have added anything you will see No homes added yet. Add the first one to start comparing., and a home with no figures shows No pricing entered yet.

The totals add up the figures you entered and nothing else. They are not an estimate of what a funeral should cost, and they are not a quote from us.

Before you compare #

Above the table there is a short section headed Before you compare — a few things to watch for. It is worth reading once before you make the calls. It is general guidance about how these quotes are usually put together — no recommendation, and no home is named.

We do not take a fee, a commission or a referral from any funeral home. That is deliberate: the moment a comparison tool earns money from one side of the comparison, it stops being one.

Finishing up #

Save and return to the planner takes you back. You can come back and add another home at any point, including after you have generated the plan.

At the bottom of the page: these totals add up only the figures you enter from each home's own quote. This is general help with comparing prices, not financial or legal advice.

Where to go next #

Keeping track of who has been told covers the other list you may be keeping this week.