High Price Of Death

A consumer group is suing the nation's three biggest funeral home chains and a leading maker of caskets accusing them of conspiring to fix casket prices, a charge the companies deny. CBS News Correspondent Trish Regan has more on the casket controversy.

When Millie Ruiz's mother died unexpectedly, she called Derek Wallace of the Wallace-Hart funeral home in Lawrence, Massachusetts.

"My mom passed away on a Thursday, and I called him that day," says Ruiz.

They took her mother's body and agreed to handle the funeral. But, as Regan reports, when she bought a casket at a discount store, she was shocked by what the funeral director told her.

"I said, 'Are you telling me you won't do the funeral?'" says Ruiz. "And he said, 'Yes, that's what I'm telling you.'"

Then, she says, he refused to release her mother's body until she paid him $1,710.

"One of the things that went through my mind is that this man is really angry at me, and he has my mother," says Ruiz.

We tried to talk to Wallace at the funeral home, and later by phone. He has not responded to CBS' efforts. He has been disciplined for this incident.

The funeral consumer's alliance says, although extreme, Wallace is an example of how the industry tries to take advantage of people in their moment of need.

"People, unfortunately, sometimes treat funeral directors as if they were clergy, ministering to the flock without price," says Josh Slocum, the director of the Funeral Consumer's Alliance.

Most people don't realize that a funeral home isn't the only place to buy a casket, often the single most expensive item in a funeral. Caskets can be bought at discount stores and from Internet retailers.

Posing as customers, CBS decided to do its own comparison shopping at a funeral home, and prices were significantly higher.

For example, a Batesville 18-gauge steel casket sells for $3,995 at one funeral home. Online, the same casket lists for $1,795.

Bob Biggens of the National Funeral Directors Association says although he cannot comment on the lawsuit, funerals are not about making money on caskets.

"Funerals are not about products or anything that a funeral director sells to a consumer," says Biggens. "Funerals are about service and care that's provided at the hour of greatest need."

But in Ruiz's hour of greatest need.

"He used my state of mind to his advantage," says Ruiz.

Care was the last thing she got.