Some consumer groups are leery about what a trend toward online funerals might signify.

"I think it's foolish to plan a funeral online without meeting someone face to face," said Joshua Slocum, transition director for the Funeral Consumers Alliance based in South Burlington, Vt. "You need to meet the director and the employees. We're not talking about a Barbie doll here. We're talking about a funeral. You can't take the emotion out of death."

Slocum also warned consumers about prepaying for funeral services well in advance of death with so-called "preneed" policies in the form of insurance or trusts. Depending on the state, he said, your money might not be protected and consumers could end up paying more than they bargained for.

However, Slocum maintained, the movement by some funeral homes to publish detailed information about their services and prices will encourage consumers to comparison shop, something that often falls by the wayside when a death occurs.

Not all funeral homes that have Web sites provide price lists online. Given the industry's past reluctance to clearly itemize funeral charges, their lack of eagerness to enhance customer price-shopping abilities is understandable.

The federal government had to step in nearly 20 years ago with regulations forcing funeral homes to provide consumers upfront with a detailed price list of all goods and services. The Federal Trade Commission's so called "funeral rule" was supposed to diminish deceptive business practices and hidden fees. But a 1999 AARP study found that 32 percent of those polled were not given a written price list up front, and another survey taken that year revealed only 8 percent of consumers even knew funeral homes were required to hand out a price list.

Peter Moloney of Moloney Family Funeral Homes in Lake Ronkonkoma, N.Y., said the firm's Web site posted the price list at one time but decided to take it down. "People were arbitrarily coming online, looking at it and leaving. I had no data on them; therefore I didn't have a lead," he said. "We're here to help people. If they want the information bad enough they can simply make a phone call.

"It was no benefit to us to have it up there, and from a legal point of view we are not required to keep it online," Moloney added.

Indeed, the Internet was not taken into account when the funeral rule was adopted in 1984 or when the rule was amended in 1994, according to Carole Danielson, the funeral rule program coordinator for the FTC. But, she stressed, if a funeral home is offering consumers some sort of online planning or interactive functions, they will have to immediately send out a price list either via e-mail or regular mail if requested.

There is the possibility that funeral homes may some day be required to post the price list online whether they like it or not. The FTC, Danielson said, is now in the process of reviewing the funeral rule and considering whether it needs to be amended again to make it more "e-commerce friendly."

But for Mitchell, the key factors weren't price, or even convenience. It was her wariness of dealing with the economic details of death while mourning. Even though Mitchell of Manchester, N.H., lived close to the funeral home that handled her grandfather's cremation, she was happy not to have to make a trip there while she was mourning. "If we had gone into a funeral home at a time when we were emotionally vulnerable, I don't know what we would have ended up buying," she said. "At home, there was no pressure to buy anything. I know some people may benefit from the interaction with the funeral home, but we knew what we wanted so this worked out for us."

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