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Late Fall 2009 www.thedead-beat.com Volume 10 Issue 4
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Columns
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Crypt-ic
Commentary Everest
Corporation... FTC’s
National Data Base of Funeral Pricing???? By Lowell Pugh A
few months ago the Everest Corporation, Houston, Texas decided to build a
nationwide data base of funeral home GPL items.
They contracted with a call center to call all funeral homes and get the
pricing on their current GPL.
Some funeral homes resisted because they did not think it a valid
inquiry.
A closer check of the rule reveals that a request from anyone must be
honored.
I
was puzzled as to why they would even want our prices.
The operator indicated it was Everest’s intention to sell funerals
nationwide.
I told the call center person that we would not be interested in
servicing funerals that they might sell. A
colleague told me this week (mid-September) that Everest planned to market
funeral service packages to corporations.
How and under what circumstances is unclear to me.
Employee benefits?
An EAP service?
Funerals sold at need?
Preneed?
Would this conflict with some states’ preneed or licensing laws? It irks me to think someone else is making money off our proprietary information. And what of the FTC—would they regulate Everest? Obviously I know little of what I’m writing about. Maybe the FTC should maintain their own database of national funeral prices and we merely e-mail them changes as they occur. Hmmm…would it go as smoothly as the internet death certificates are expected to flow?
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