Here are summaries and links for some previous Price Comparison studies conducted by our nonprofit organization.
2024. Our Price Comparison study committee, chaired by Jim Couchon, began January 11. On January 26 they mailed letters to 84 funeral home locations requesting their General Price Lists (GPLs) by a deadline of March 1. The committee then reached out to non-responders by phone, email and/or on-site visits. By early April GPLs for 79 funeral homes had been collected, bringing the overall response rate to 94% – a new record. See 2024 Price Comparison table.
2022. Our Price Comparison study committee, led by Joan Pillsbury, met on January 19 to prepare the letter to 86 funeral home locations in Western Massachusetts. As usual, we requested copies of the GPLs. We also asked for some additional information. By the end of June we had GPLs for 60 funeral homes, and learned that one funeral home had closed. In July we posted our 2022 Price Comparison table on our website. By mid-August, we had GPLs for 64 and partial price information for five (5) more, and updated our table, bringing the overall response rate to 81%. (Our previous highest rate had been 64.7%, in 2020.)
2020. The 2020 Price Comparison (a Google spreadsheet) is still viewable online.
2016. Our Fall 2016 Newsletter (archived online) included a front page article “Comparing Prices in 2016: Good News and Bad” and a price table “Cremation Pricing in Western Massachusetts” on pages 4-5.
NOTE: For our earliest history, our price reports and other documents are archived in Special Collections & Archives at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Consult this Finding Aid if you wish to learn about FCAWM documents archived there. We conduct studies of funeral home prices every two years.