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Nowadays, there is a saying circulating on the Internet: "I can't even afford to die".
As we all know, today's sky-high funeral expenses have brought great pressure to the families of countless deceased. There are thousands of urns at every turn, and tens of thousands of pots of flowers have to be collected. At the most exaggerated time, the gross profit margin of the funeral industry actually reached 600%.
In other words, who is manipulating behind these funeral industries? When will we be able to bring down the sky-high funeral expenses?
20 potted flowers sold for 13,800 yuan
On July 9, the 4-year-old anti-cancer Internet celebrity "Little Apple" unfortunately passed away. In order to let the child walk decently, the mother asked the funeral staff to arrange some flowers in the mourning hall.
Who would have thought that after only 20 pots of flowers, the funeral home would charge the mother 13,800 yuan. This lion opened his mouth and directly made his mother cry. Then this sky-high flower pot incident was stabbed on the Internet.
After the investigation of the relevant departments, as well as the negotiation of the funeral home. In the end, the funeral home decided to cheapen the price of the flower pot by 10,800 yuan, that is, only 3,000 yuan, and the matter was slowly closed.
Although the turmoil subsided, netizens raised countless questions. Why are funeral expenses so high today? Who exactly is there to manipulate these profiteering industries?
How expensive is a funeral expense process?
Regarding these questions, let's look for answers from a person named Xiao Wang.
After Xiao Wang's father died, Xiao Wang prepared to cremate his father's body in line with the principle of simplicity. However, the next series of cumbersome processes directly stunned Xiao Wang.
He first called the funeral home, intending to have someone from the funeral home come and receive the body. However, the other party repeatedly refused.
The funeral home staff said that if they wanted the funeral home to send a car to pick up the body, they had to call 120 first and go to the hospital to get an appraisal, so that the funeral home could get out of the car.
Xiao Wang didn't want to occupy 120 resources, so he started looking for acquaintances, planning to take a shortcut. Soon, through his connections, he found a person in charge of the funeral home and asked him to transfer his car.
Xiao Wang thought that everything would be fine if he took the body away, but he didn't know that he had fallen into the black hole of money. First of all, the cost of transporting the remains has to be 300, and the driver has to be given 100 yuan. After arriving at the destination, the cremation fee is another 900.
Of course, some family members may choose the head stove. Because other stoves may be mixed with the ashes of the previous deceased, the head stove appears to be relatively pure. It's just that if you want to choose the first furnace, you have to increase the price, and the extra price generally ranges from 300-600 yuan.
Some bodies have to be put into the freezer in advance if they are not numbered. The freezer also has a fee, almost 50 yuan a day. If you also put a stereo on the freezer and add some decoration, it will be 500 a day.
Some family members even ask staff to apply makeup to the body, which makes the cost even greater. In short, after Xiao Wang saw this series of operations, he was instantly stunned: "Who knew that there was so much attention to burning ashes?" ”
After Xiao Wang's father's body was burned, the next thing was to choose various utensils. For example, an urn costs two or three thousand. During this period, the ashes have to be stored somewhere, and the storage fee is 800.
When choosing an urn, some staff will come over to sell paper work, that is, paper sports cars, villas, etc.
According to Xiao Wang, something like this is completely a forced push, and you have to buy it if you don't buy it. After all, the previous shortcut was not taken in vain, and the funeral home had to make more money. In this way, Xiao Wang spent another 500 yuan to buy a bunch of paper work.
In addition, such as shrouds and hats, gold and silver ingots, spiritual supplies, incense candles, etc., Xiao Wang was pushed one by one. Most of these prices are around a few hundred yuan, and the cumulative sum adds up to thousands.
According to Xiao Wang, this trip cost six or seven thousand, and this is still a simple model. If you want to go to a full series of packages, it is estimated that you can't afford 10,000 yuan.
Monopoly industry with interests of up to 600%.
It can also be seen from the process of disposing of Xiao Wang's father's body that the sky-high funeral expenses are indeed not groundless. Whatever the whole project is, hundreds or thousands of them are gone.
There are also rumors on the Internet that the gross profit margin of the funeral industry has reached more than 600%. For example, body bags that cost a few dollars, some funeral homes directly sell them for 200 yuan.
There are also some funeral homes that directly sell urns for 1.2-14,000 yuan each. This can't be called a profiteering industry, it should be called a leek cutting industry. After all, the urn is just a piece of wood, and it sells to tens of thousands, which no one can say.
The most important thing is that these things are still bound to the package, and you can't buy them if you don't buy them. Otherwise, the next step of the process will not be able to move forward.
It can be said that the funeral home relies on this stuck method to forcibly monopolize customers. People have no choice but to pay obediently.
It is precisely because the funeral industry is so profitable that more and more funeral homes are now opened.
According to relevant statistics, in 2020, the number of newly registered funeral homes in the country will reach 14,000. As of 2021, there are 79,000 funeral homes in the country. During this time, the shares of many funeral home giants also soared.
In short, because of the stimulus of interests, many funeral companies have sprung up. Coupled with the imperfection of the market supervision system, in this case, some private funeral companies have begun to make profits.
Contract the mortuary to the funeral home
It's not just the funeral home, in fact, there are more or less entanglements of interests in the entire "deceased consumption chain". A hospital morgue, for example, is a prime example.
In many cases, hospitals will contract out redundant morgues to make them more valuable. For example, it is contracted to a funeral home for use.
After all, some funeral parlors are desperately short of beds because their business is too good, and hospital mortuaries just happen to be unused. In this case, the two can just achieve a complementary interest.
These funeral homes generally pay an annual fee of 300,000 yuan to take over a morgue. The person in charge of some funeral homes simply became a "second landlord" and continued to contract out the rented morgue.
Relying on the operation of these "second landlords", some mortuaries have even reached the point of annual fees of millions. It can be seen that in the corners that people's eyes can't see, all kinds of interests are conveyed in an endless stream. Only you can't think of it, and you can't do it without them.
It is precisely because of the hype of these people that today's "deceased consumption chain" is becoming more and more expensive.
Take the cemetery as an example, the Shanghai Fushouyuan cemetery has reached 7-80,000 yuan per square meter, which is more expensive than the housing prices in ordinary cities. Crucially, less than 10% of the population is used. It can be seen that many people really "can't afford to die" and "can't afford to bury".
This is also why after the cremation of the body of a professor at Peking University a few years ago, his son directly took a plastic bag and left. After all, the current funeral expenses have broken through the sky, and it is not self-inflicted trouble to spend that unjust money?
May the "chain of consumption of the dead" no longer be expensive
Of course, with the supervision of the marketing department, some of the funeral industry has improved a lot.
For example, the Guangzhou Funeral Service Center has issued an announcement, saying that the body can be cremated directly without a farewell ceremony, and it is as simple as possible.
There are also some funeral parlors in Shanghai that are also recruiting temporary corpse bearers to avoid a shortage of manpower. There are also media reports in Beijing that some funeral homes can provide 24-hour service.
It can be seen that under the vigorous supervision of the government, some red tape in the funeral industry has indeed been improved.
It is hoped that in the days to come, the relevant departments can continue to strengthen supervision. At the same time, funeral companies also have to make their own adjustments to reduce sky-high funeral costs as much as possible.
Only in this way can the pressure on the families of those who have passed away be relieved. Otherwise, people in the future will really not even be able to die.
Information sources:
The surging news [Anti-cancer angel "Little Apple" passed away, and the mourning hall arranged about 20 flower baskets at a price of 13,800 yuan, and the local funeral home responded]
Qianzhan Network ["Profiteering" urn purchase price 260 price 1790? Profits soared by 600%, netizens said that they were too cold "with analysis of the market status of the funeral industry"]
39 Health Network [Hospital morgue outsourced to funeral intermediaries: do not buy shrouds to detain the body]
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