Funeral homes refuse to give prices over the phone despite FTC Funeral Rule requiring it since 1984

The FTC Funeral Rule has required funeral homes to disclose itemized prices over the phone since 1984, yet in the FTC's first-ever undercover phone sweep in 2023, investigators called over 250 funeral providers and found that 39 of them (roughly 15%) either refused to answer price questions, gave inconsistent pricing for identical services, or sent package-only lists instead of the required itemized General Price List. Why it matters: so grieving families cannot comparison shop during the narrow 24-72 hour decision window after a death, so they default to the nearest or recommended funeral home, so they pay whatever price is quoted without leverage, so the industry sustains average markups of 47-72% above market rate (as documented by the Consumer Federation of America for SCI-owned homes), so American families overpay by thousands of dollars at the single most financially vulnerable moment of their lives. The structural root cause is that the FTC has historically relied on complaint-driven enforcement with maximum penalties of $50,120 per violation but no systematic auditing program, and funeral homes that violate the rule for the first time are merely offered a voluntary training program (the Funeral Rule Offender's Program run by the NFDA, the industry's own trade group) rather than facing meaningful fines, creating a rational calculus where non-compliance pays.