Blowing the Whistle

Eliza May's whistle blower lawsuit against the state is the result of a Texas Funeral Service Commission investigation into Service Corporation International's embalming operations. SCI, the world's largest death care business, increases its profitability by concentrating operations into single locations. For instance, it often dispatches all of its hearses in a given city from a single location, and often uses a similar strategy on embalming. But while those moves reduce overhead, SCI rarely passes on those savings to customers.

According to a recent study by the Austin Memorial and Burial Information Society (AMBIS), the five Austin-area Cook-Walden funeral homes, all of which are owned by SCI, charge $725 for embalming. The next most expensive competitor, Thomason Funeral Home in San Marcos, charges $400. Embalming prices at other Austin-area funeral homes range between $200 and $360. The AMBIS survey also found that Cook-Walden homes also had the highest prices on refrigeration, immediate burial, direct cremation, and rental caskets.

Darryl J. Roberts, a former funeral home owner who wrote Profits of Death, an expose of the funeral industry, and was later sued by the company for speaking out about it, points out that SCI's profit margins on some funerals are as high as 80%. "They are really taking advantage of the people," says Roberts. "They have this huge buying power and they are not passing the savings on to the consumers. It's the only consolidation in the country that I know of that doesn't pass its savings on to the consumer." --R.B.