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Our tables rating individual firms will be more valuable to you if you know how the data were gathered and how they should be interpreted.
We regularly survey area CHECKBOOK and Consumer Reports subscribers for their feedback on services they have used. For our survey on funeral homes, we asked consumers to rate their experiences with firms they had most recently used "inferior," "adequate," or "superior" on several aspects of service, including "overall performance," "doing service properly," "pleasantness of staff," "letting you know costs early," and "advice on service options and costs." Our Ratings Tables show the percent of each firm's surveyed customers who rated it "superior" (as opposed to "inferior" or "adequate") on each question.
We have included on our Ratings Tables all of the firms for which we received at least 10 ratings on our customer surveys. If a firm is not listed on our Ratings Tables, it simply means we did not receive at least 10 ratings for it.
Since many firms were rated by rather small numbers of raters, small differences between two firms in the percentage of raters who gave a particular rating (say, "superior") should be ignored. The table below gives a rough guide to minimum differences you should look for in deciding on one firm over another.
When using these survey data, remember that the questions are to some degree subjective and that the differences among firms might be explained by differences in the personalities, backgrounds, critical standards, and other characteristics of the raters or by biases these raters might have.
For firms that were evaluated in our last full, published report, our Ratings Tables show the number of complaints filed with local Better Business Bureaus (BBB) for a recent three-year period.
When using the complaint information, keep in mind that complaints are not always justified; sometimes the customer is unreasonable. Remember that we didn't have a measure of business volume; large firms are more likely to incur complaints simply because they serve more customers. Also be aware that some firms may be at greater risk than others of incurring complaints because of the specific types of business they do.
We always recommend that you look for substantial differences in complaint counts and rates. We also advise giving little weight to complaint counts if the total count against a firm is less than three or four.
Using information obtained from the firms' General Price Lists and other information collected by CHECKBOOK's telephone shoppers (who did not reveal their affiliation with CHECKBOOK when they called), we calculated sample prices for each firm for three types of services:
- Direct cremation—Includes the firm's basic fee, the least expensive cremation container/casket offered, and the crematory cost.
- Direct burial—Includes the firm's basic fee, and the least expensive casket offered.
- Traditional funeral—Includes the minimum services of the funeral director and staff; transfer of deceased from place of death to the funeral home; embalming, cosmetology, dressing, and casketing; least expensive solid oak casket; one two-hour visitation session at the funeral home the day before the funeral service; supervision by the home's staff of a funeral service at a church; hearse; and the home's supervision of a committal/graveside service.
All of the data must be interpreted in view of timeliness. Our customer survey data are from surveys conducted from January 2003 to April 2011. Survey respondents were asked to report on experiences in the preceding year. Our data on complaints for the BBBs are for a three-year period dating back from a date in November or December 2009. Our price data were collected from January to March 2010.
For the most part, our tables include firms for which we collected 10 or more ratings on our customer survey during the customer survey period mentioned above, but we do not report data for periods prior to firms' changes of name and ownership. As a result, some large firms are not listed at all. If only name or ownership changed, we do report the data. Changes subsequent to the dates listed above may not be taken into account.
We give checkmarks to firms that score highest on a scoring system that we devise for each service field. Our scoring systems weight the various data in our tables and text based on our subjective judgment of their importance. Since the scores are based entirely on information presented, you can apply your own subjective judgments, and decide whether you prefer firms we have not given checkmarks. Where we do not have important data on a firm, we cannot give our checkmark.
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