Costco Caskets?

May 28, 2008 11:54 AM

Do any of you have experience with caskets purchased from Costco? The mother of someone very close to me may soon be in need of one, and I've only seen the corners of the displays at the stores themselves. Have any of you actually seen one of the full caskets in person, purchased one, or anything related?
posted by c0nsumer to home & garden (5 comments total)

I don't have an answer, and I'm sorry about your friend, but realize that the reason you're not getting answers is probably that this isn't much of a question. You're just asking whether people have seen something. What do you want to know about?
posted by jejune at 12:40 PM on May 28, 2008

I shopped for a casket last year, but I didn't go with something from Costco. I chose a casket from the memorial society's funeral home. If you are looking for an affordable casket and funeral, you might want to sign up with the memorial society (or other non-profit) in your region. They provide services at a much lower price. We buried my family member in a stained pine casket, which was actually very nice looking and nothing like the industry makes it out to be. We also worked with a memorial society, which charged about half the rate of any of the funeral homes in the area and actually pointed out budget-minded options.
posted by acoutu at 1:49 PM on May 28, 2008

I also don't have experience with Costco's caskets specifically, but I can give you two general bits of trivia that might help.

First off, it's recent changes in state laws that allow for caskets to be sold by anyone other than a licensed funeral director. These laws were championed by consumer groups because the funeral director markups were, by any measure, equivalent to price gouging.

Second, funeral services in all states are governed by a regulatory agency. In response to the opening of the market, many states have adopted minimum standards for casket quality. (Some shady, storefront retailers were selling caskets made of substandard materials. When I worked as a legislative analyst for the Texas House, we worked on a bill aimed to curb such practices. The committee testimony was pretty horrific. Families told stories of cheap caskets that leaked or even fell apart during funeral services.)

You're not specific about what your friend is looking for. Presumably they're looking for something that's of reasonable quality (since they'd be able to judge the appearance for themselves in the store). Again, not having 'kicked the tires' myself (and not having died), I can't personally testify to the Costco caskets' quality. However, given that state agencies regulate such things, and that a nationwide chain like Costco would probably purchase caskets that would meet the most stringent of those state standards, I think you can assume reasonable quality.

If nothing else, check out the website of the funeral board in your friend's state to see what their standards are.
posted by mudpuppie at 3:08 PM on May 28, 2008

No idea on the caskets but I am an avid Costco proponent. Their products are almost always top notch in my experience.
posted by Octoparrot at 8:35 PM on May 28, 2008

Thanks for the responses, everyone. It turns out that there wasn't really a savings if the casket was needed immediately, so my girlfriend and her family ended up going with one from the local funeral home.

My question was a bit hurried, but I was trying to find out simply if anyone here had any experience with them at all. My Google-fu for finding reviews of the caskets, or any info besides their existence, isn't so great, so I looked to the most useful site for answering weird questions in the past.

Thanks for the help everyone.
posted by c0nsumer at 11:28 AM on May 30, 2008