Wal-mart, like Costco, is now selling caskets and urns through its online store.
Prices range from $999 for models like “Dad Remembered” and “Mom Remembered” steel caskets to the mid-level $1,699 “Executive Privilege.” All are less than $2,000, except for the Sienna Bronze Casket, which sells for $3,199.
Caskets ship within 48 hours. Federal law requires funeral homes to accept third-party caskets. Returns are not accepted, the company says on its site, unless the product has been damaged during shipping.
The caskets come from Star Legacy Funeral Network, Inc., a company based in McHenry, Illinois, that sells the same caskets for about the same price — some less — on its site, along with many others.
Star Legacy CEO Rick Obadiah said the response in the first week has been better than the company or Wal-Mart expected, though he declined to give specifics. A spokesman for Walmart.com also declined to release sales figures and downplayed the venture.
“Several online retailers offer this category on their sites,” spokesman Ravi Jariwala wrote in an e-mail. “We are simply conducting a limited beta test to understand customer response.”
Now if they’d just sell a BBQ grill hot enough to cremate Grandma I could have the cheapest funeral ever. Or could you buy enough chafers at Wal-mart to do the job???
Is there no level too low for you to stoop in order to make a “sienna” joke?
and
they
are
CRAP.
I think I just wanna have people dispose of my remains like they did Donny in The Big Lebowski.
yup.
my ashes in a coffee can. that’s sounds right.
Make sure its a big enough coffee can. The usual human is about seven pounds of ash.
J-Lo’s ash is 12 pounds, easy.
The chafers would just make grandma soggy after awhile, but it’s not a question of chafer quantity; it’s sterno quantity. Also, if grandma gets below 140 degrees you can’t serve anymore of her, and have to throw her out.
The t-shirts would have been a fail without the price.
Don’t shop at Walmart any more, gave it up and my blood pressure went down. I spend less too. My grandmother, however, goes to one in every town she visits, loves the place. Do the caskets come with a big yellow smiley face? She’d want hers done in rhinestones, but if they can do that, she’s in.
Hey I just posted something in this thread and it disappeared……..ARGHH!
We can bury her, burn her, or dump her.
Unless she’s an eater.
Your post was cremated.
No, but you can buy them in bulk at Sam’s Club, I’m sure.
Okay, slightly off subject – if there are any Costco members out there – beware the front cover of their “Connections” magazine: http://www.costcoconnection.com/connection/200911#pg1
Upon receiving the mag, I immediately started the night’s fire with it – in my wood stove. “Hot enough for you, Al!”
I just lost my dinner!!! Thanks, Kenn.
I used to be a marketing/membership manager there and can attest to their flammable properties.
Sorry about that, Fritz. Guess I should have included a “viewer warning.”
On the plus side. This issue’s cover does burn quite well – my fire started without a hitch. The cover can also be used as a handy dartboard replacement.
I dig the exploding wind turbine avatar, Kenn!
Kenn, your avatar reminds me of a story we had running on the local news here. It would seem the wind turbines are killing birds. PETA was imploding. 1/2 of them want the turbines gone, the other 1/2 was shouting about wind power being an important part of the energy problem. Good times.
That is awesome! I love, love, love stories like that!!
“Mr. Sideous – and they are CRAP”
Because the quality is so important. A box to rot in the ground. Even the $999 models are too expensive. Are we ancient Egyptians here? Every dollar spent on coffins is a dollar not spent on a kick-ass memorial party for the deceased.
It’s all about carbon, fozzy. A flimsy casket allows the worms and maggots to turn that decaying corpse into dangerous, greenhouse gases more quickly than a cadillac coffin. Inter your loved one in a Wal-Mart casket and a polar bear dies!
Depends on the function of the casket, Fozzy. If there are viewings and such, then a cheap tin stamped china made crapola with shredded newspaper stuffing will look bad. So, yes, quality is important. If they’re going directly into the ground, then by all means get a cardboard box.
I could definitely go out in a Wal-Mart casket. Best case scenario – bury me in the middle of Berkeley with a giant middlefinger for a tombstone.
I just read a book about death and burial (and, incidentally, vampires) and it seemed to me to make a pretty good argument that there are reasons for the embalming, casket and vault business. Dead bodies are remarkably mobile and vulnerable to weather events, getting dug up by animals, earth subsidence, etc. Not a nice final memory of Grandma. Our ancestors learned to bury those suckers deep and weight them down.
Oh, the life you lead, Lars!
“Our ancestors learned to bury those suckers deep and weight them down.”
…Or entombed above ground like in N.O. so they won’t float away as easily.
I’m all for the weighting them down part – my family’s in granite.