6 Facts You Should Know Before Pre-Planning a Funeral
The staff at Redmon Funeral Home wants you to be fully informed and comfortable regarding any pre-planning decisions you make. Increasingly, cemeteries are also offering pre-planning, so you may be unsure of where to begin this very important process or the proper steps to take.
At Redmon Funeral Home, we strongly believe that any funeral planning should begin at the funeral home, not the cemetery; to do otherwise is simply a backwards approach. Unfortunately, we’ve also seen time and time again where families thought they were saving money by making funeral arrangements through the cemetery, but found out later it ended up costing them much, much more.
When planned and pre-paid at the funeral home, the cost of a funeral is protected from inflation and can be transferred to any funeral home in the country. This is NOT true when making purchases at a cemetery that involve caskets or vaults.
Before you being any pre-planning process, arm yourself with these six facts. By keeping these points in mind, you can avoid regrets or incurring additional expenses later:
1. There is no reason you must update your files at the cemetery prior to a death. Very often this is part of a series of sales techniques used by cemetery salespeople to sell vaults, markers and caskets.
2. Funeral homes will have a much larger selection of caskets, vaults and urns than what is available from a cemetery. This means greater choice in style and price. You may also find that similar or even lower quality caskets are as much as $1,000 more at the cemetery compared to the funeral home.
3. After selecting a casket or vault, you should receive the manufacturer’s name, model number and model name. Funeral homes will ALWAYS provide this to you. This confirms to your family the merchandise you selected is provided later– not a substitute chosen by someone else.
4. Make sure you can transfer your complete plan to any funeral home, in any state, at any time in the future. Get this promise in writing before you complete any sales transaction, particularly at a cemetery.
5. Is the price quoted only valid at that moment or for a limited number of days? If so, this can be another high-pressure sales technique from a cemetery salesperson that you should avoid. You should NEVER be under time pressure when pre-planning these important decisions.
6. Many cemeteries hire commissioned salespeople who might be required to meet sales goals or even quotas. This might shift their focus from “helping you” to “selling you.”
For more information on the process of preplanning, please contact Keith Redmon, Bruce Redmon, Kevin Nelson or Adam Glenn, the licensed, non-commissioned funeral directors at Redmon Funeral Home, at 330-688-6631. These qualified, experienced professionals will guide you through the process and help you make decisions that are right for you and your family, not for the cemetery salesperson.