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ICFA Responds to ABC News Report
March 1, 2001
VIA Fax and 1st Class Mail
Robin Sproul
Vice President and Bureau Chief
ABC News
1717 DeSales Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20036
Re: 2/26 Telecast Segment, "High Cost of Dying"
Dear Ms. Sproul:
The Monday, February 26th broadcast of World News Tonight featured a segment on prepaid funerals entitled, "The High Cost of Dying." This relatively brief segment managed to give your viewers some extraordinarily bad advice, provided a wide berth for industry critics, and maligned thousands of honest men and women - all in about two minutes.
The ICFA is concerned with the existence of any consumer complaints involving funerals and burials, but your anecdotal use of isolated problems failed to place into context the approximately 5,500 funerals that take place every day in the United States. Viewers are led to believe that prepaid funeral contracts are a form of financial investment similar to mutual funds or equities where they should expect to collect cash dividends or interest. In some cases they may, but prepaid contracts are primarily designed to provide specific merchandise and services selected by the consumer, at a guaranteed price, for use at the time of death. Your viewers never could have guessed that based on your slanted reporting.
Most damaging for consumers is the "advice" your segment gives at the end: "If you really want to plan for your funeral, just open a savings account." That sounds sensible but reality teaches a different lesson. Funeral directors and cemeterians have experienced the almost daily occurrence where families are unable to pay for a funeral because their savings were depleted by the expenses of the decedent's final illness. Frankly, if your segment simply observed that prepayment is not for everyone, we would have tended to agree. But the wholesale slamming of our industry will only persuade your viewers to do no funeral planning at all, leaving the task to relatives at the time of death, who themselves won=t have a clue. Surely, the viewers of ABC News deserve better than this!
Very truly yours,
Robert M. Fells
External Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel
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