Funeral Words

What do you hear about casket prices?

I have heard from one distributor of caskets that their suppliers plan to pass along only a moderate increase in costs and that the Batesville increases may be way out of line with the realities of the marketplace.

Anyone out there willing to post a few comments about your reactions to the price increases and what you've heard from other suppliers? 

Missing in America Project

A communication from the Massachusetts Funeral Directors Association made reference to the "Missing in America Project". Apparently it is a non-profit organization dedicated to the purpose of locating the unclaimed cremated remains of American veterans and seeing to it that those remains find a proper interment in a state or federal veterans cemetery.

I don't know about you, but I have not come across this group before now.

According to the MFDA newsletter, a Massachusetts chapter has formed for this organization and they plan to meet with the association board in September.

For further information, follow the link to the MIAP website.

http://www.miap.us/

More information as it becomes available.

Romanian Grave Markers

Romanian Grave Markers

Follow the link to an amazing collection of photographs depicting hand carved grave markers from Romania. Unfortunately the site is written in a slavic language, but worth a look nevertheless.

Make it 13.1%

I've had a chance to run the Batesville numbers more closely and though a few of the highest end units did not change in price at all, most of the metals rose between 10% and 11% with a couple of the basic metals rising as much as 13.1% and the woods jumped between 8% and 10.5%.

That's a lot of new cost to digest at a time when utility and fuel bills have been rising rapidly.

This may be a particularly good time to talk with your independent distributor. With Batesville agressively selling caskets to distributors (under a different brand name), other suppliers have chosen to hold down their prices in face of the competition. Depending on your local circumstances there may be more room to negotiate than you've had in a while.

12% ????!!!!????

I just finished talking with my Batesville representative who told me about the price increases which will hit the first of October. According to him, most prices will rise between 7.5% and 9.5% with a few units rising as much as 12%.

For those who guarantee prearrangements, keep an eye on this. That's a huge chunk out of your pre-need bottom line this year and for many years to come.

12% --- What can I say but WOW!

Secretary in Your Cellphone

I've only played around with this a few times and it won't be for everyone, but if you'd like to find a different way to track and manage to do lists and appointments WITHOUT the need of a computer keyboard or scraps of paper piled up everywhere, you might want to try Jott.com.

www.jott.com

In short, you sign up for a free account (they're still in "beta", they haven't said what it will cost after that), enter some basic contact information and then use your cell or land line phone to dial into their voice recognition system. It asks you who you want to "jott", yourself or someone in your contacts list, and then you have 15 seconds to dictate a note. After that jott.com sends you an email and/or a text message transcription of your message. You can even set up reminders which come to you at a later date.

The website does a fairly complete job of explaining how the system works and I can tell you from personal experience that the voice recognition works quite well. Just keep in mind that you should take the time to spell out proper names so that they can get transcribed accurately.

Like I say, not for everyone. But if you find yourself on the run much of the time and tend to lose your reminders and to-do lists, it might be worth a trial run, at least while they offer it for free.

UPDATE: As of today (August 21, 2008), Jott.com has dropped their "beta" lable and gone subsciption. They do have a "free", "ad supported" service which only lets you jot notes to yourself which you can only view through their website. The standard service which includes emailing, now runs $3.95/month and they have a "pro" edition which includes longer messages (up to 30 seconds) and Blackberry synching for $12.95/month.

Urn Retrieval in Japan

I haven't had the opportunity to post here very often but I couldn't pass up on leaving you the following link.

In Japan, a funeral company has developed an automated columbarium where grievers swipe an ID card and the urn is retrieved from an underground vault for viewing purposes and then returned to the vault afterwards.

There's a video demonstration at the link provided.

Amazing.

Engadget: Automated Columbarium