A few weeks ago, Service Corporation International (SCI), the worlds largest consolidator of funeral homes, announced that it would be purchasing Keystone Group Holdings. Keystone, which ownes around 200 funeral homes in the US, has two locations in New Hampshire. Both locations are in Keene – Foley Funeral Home and Fletcher Funeral Home. In fact, these are the only two funeral homes in Keene. With these two firms, SCI will now operate McHugh Funeral Home in Manchester, Zis Sweeney and St. Laurent Funeral Homes in Nashua and Fleury-Patry Funeral Homes in Berlin and Gorham. With seven rooftops in the state, one would think SCI would be able to provide some real economies of scale in terms of pricing and offerings. Yet, SCI’s prices, both in NH and throughout New England and the rest of the United States are always among the highest it the communities in which it operates.
While I am all for competition, I feel the public should be made aware of which funeral homes are family owned and which are owned by publicly-traded firms who need to answer to their Board of Directors and stockholders, not the families they serve. A number of states require funeral homes to disclose their ownership on their signs and on advertisements. Call me naive, but if I see a sign or advertisement for the Jones Family funeral Home, I would expect someone named Jones to actually work there. If all this sound like bitter grapes, it’s not. In fact, to have SCI come into your community is one of the best things a competing funeral home could ask for. Generally, within a matter of months, they raise prices, change the staffing and pull back from community involvement. What more could we ask for.
Tags: Keene Nh funeral homes, Keystone and NH, New Hampshire public funeral homes, SCI, SCI and NH, Service Corporation International and NH
The nice thing about a competitve marketplace is that everyone is free to engage in their own business model … and while the consumer is ultimately the final word in their selection of a funeral or cremation service provider, your observations about Service Corporation offer an unusually critical view for an individual whose firm had been a Dignity Memorial Provider (national brand for Service Corporation) for several years and whose pricing model and Affinity marketing program finds its roots in the Service Corporation garden. I believe there is an old saying about throwing stones and living in glass houses that might be appropriate to consider.
Sorry for not responding to this post earlier. As you seem knowledgable of the funeral industy, you must know that SCI asked high quality independent funeral homes throughtout the US to be part of their Dignity offering in the earlier days so that they could serve families nationwide. As a family-owned funeral home serving the community for over 100 years, we welcomed the opportunity to provide these services, even those referred to us by SCI. And while SCI has specific pricing that their publically-owned funeral homes had to follow, all independent Digifity alliliates had the right to price their service in accordance to their own pricing, irrespective of what SCI charged. In fact, our funeral and cremation packages bear no resemblance to what SCI offered – in price or in content. But saying all of this, I understand your point of view and appreciate your thoughtful comments.