Costco has been selling caskets online for years. This is really only interesting or funny to people who haven't accepted death as simply part of life.
@MB: I don't really think it's that funny. Like I said, its horrible they're selling coffins. Leave it to the professionals (if such a thing exists). BUT I'm happy my family can bury me for affordable prices. For Wal-Mart to want to keep up with the whole "pleasant and welcoming place to shop" shtick, they're sure mixed up selling coffins. Good thing for them, then, that they're only available online.
I have NO idea what the problem is. Ifyou're going to get a coffin, you've got to get it from somewhere. They're not just going to have them lying around in the store or anything, they just offer them now. It's like getting mad that they sell prescription medicine.
Or would you rather get dumped unlovingly in a ditch?
SOMEONE please tell me why this is in any way a bad thing...
@Romination: Nobody said it was a bad thing. Its just awkward to see Wal-Mart selling coffins. Although, in retrospect, it is a little more, I dunno, calming to know you can get them at lower prices. I heard horror stories of the things being, like, five grand from some places. Still, it's weird; people are always complaining that Wal-Mart cuts down their business, with their lower prices from having product manufactured overseas, and causing them to go out of business and lose their jobs and stuff. And they do tend to have their hand in a little bit of everything these days. I don't know if I should feel sorry for all the people who used to make coffins and are now in direct competition with that kind of wholesale beast, or if I should rejoice that consumers who previously had to go to companies who, with their ironclad monopoly on the business, would jack up prices on coffins of all things, now have a less expensive alternative.
Also, there was a golden coffin up there that was simply stunning.
Burying people is such an expensive thing to do, thousands of dollars, buying burial plots, caskets, tombstones/ plaques, transportation, backhoe. That's not even including the actual funeral and funerary reception.
It's easily one of the more stressful and tragic times in one's life. You're still mourning the loss of a loved one, being emotionally compromised, now add in the funerary costs that cause stress and anger.
This is why my Mother made it clear to me and my brother that she wants to be cremated so that we won't have to go through all of this for her. She said that she wants to be cremated and have her two children scatter her ashes into the ocean. It's inspired me to be cremated when the time comes for me as well.
But some people don't want to be cremated, or didn't leave any instructions for how they wanted their body to be after death. So it's good that someone is trying to make it more affordable for people who shouldn't have to pay such extraordinary rates. Yeah, it's weird that it's Wal Mart, but hey, when your dead, are you really gonna care that your casket came from Wal Mart or are you gonna care that your demise brought about a financial burden on your loved ones?
@MB: yeah. i think coffins are stupid. 100 years from now, the earths surface changes you coffin could be 20 feet away from you tombstone lol. just get cremated.
" @MB: I don't really think it's that funny. Like I said, its horrible they're selling coffins. Leave it to the professionals (if such a thing exists). BUT I'm happy my family can bury me for affordable prices. For Wal-Mart to want to keep up with the whole "pleasant and welcoming place to shop" shtick, they're sure mixed up selling coffins. Good thing for them, then, that they're only available online. "
Its a fucking box, who gives a shit where you get it from
" @MB: I don't really think it's that funny. Like I said, its horrible they're selling coffins. Leave it to the professionals (if such a thing exists). BUT I'm happy my family can bury me for affordable prices. For Wal-Mart to want to keep up with the whole "pleasant and welcoming place to shop" shtick, they're sure mixed up selling coffins. Good thing for them, then, that they're only available online. "
Despite how "professional" you consider most casket manufacturers, the simple fact remains that almost all caskets end up collapsing under the weight produced by six feet of dirt, meaning that your relatives are more than likely crushed as we speak.
Funeral homes are some of the worst businesses period they take advantage of people in a time of great stress when your not thinking straight if your nana just died the Salesmen at the homes is gonna try and sell you a $6000 coffin thats going to be buried in the ground a few days later because you'll feel bad putting grandma in a $200 casket they make thousands of dollars off people on insane overpriced coffins, when I die I am dead Please buy my coffin from walmart or kmart or hell go out back and get me a nice cardboard box Ill be dead I don' care what box you put me in.
Now thats me I am not saying throw your grandma in a little box but funerals are for the living not the dead if you bury them in a lead lined ancient redwood casket it makes no difference.
Even if they weren't selling coffins, I don't understand how this is a bad thing? If you want your loved ones buried, now you have a more reasonable way of doing it. Honestly, the body is going to be buried under ground, it doesn't matter if the coffin is cheap or if it's expensive with elegant designs etched onto it. It's going under ground, no one's going to see it and it will eventually degrade no matter what.
As for buying urns at Wal-Mart and other similar stores, I don't see a problem with that either.
@brukaoru: Holy crap that last link if you scroll down they make pendants and necklaces for ashes? Like I'm all for cremation and stuff, but damn wearing the remains of a loved one around your neck is a little weird to me. Also the child urns were a little creepy too.
" For some it matters how a person is buried and what they are buried in. "
There's no doubting that, but no one is forcing anyone to purchase a coffin from Wal-Mart. If someone wants to spend thousands of dollars on a casket somewhere else, they can. I doubt businesses that sell expensive caskets will go out of business just because Wal-Mart is selling cheap coffins.
" Costco has been selling caskets online for years. This is really only interesting or funny to people who haven't accepted death as simply part of life. "
It's a part of life, and a pretty lucrative business. It's a simple business model; all people die = some people have to buy coffins, therefore Walmart/Costco sell coffins.
I wonder if someone in the sells department thought this up or that they received so many 'do you sell coffins?' questions that they decided to start selling them.
@MB: Death isn't a vacation, or the measles, or a part-time job, or a pair of rubber boots. Death is the end of life. It's more than simply a "part of life".
Anyways, back on topic, it's good to see more competition in this field (although I would argue that in a free market, industrial-scale caskets would be considered a 'malinvestment", since there would be less of a reason to value the sanctity of corpses with less irrationality attached to what death represents), but hey, if there's demand for something, there's nothing wrong with a new player coming in and undercutting the competition.
@iam3green: I agree. Our species pre-occupation with "death care" is somewhat troublesome. That wood could be put to much better use to build housing infrastructure!
@Emandudeguyperson: So wait, you're not upset that coffins are being sold, but that they're being sold inexpensively? Well why don't we just sacrifice all of the human race in the name of death if death is such a monument?
Seriously, there's nothing wrong with saving money on funeral costs. Funeral homes overcharge ridiculously for "real caskets", it's good that someone's swooping in and under-cutting them. Funeral home companies can go fuck themselves as far as I'm concerned.
The Co-Op does funerals in England. To anyone who doesn't know what that is, it's a shop that makes Wal-Mart look like it's only for the elite members of society.
@Bones8677: When people ask me why I want to be cremated, I answer because I kicked a dead crow as a child and saw it filled with crawling maggots... now I have couple of more reasons:)
Well if Death is mutually exclusive to Life, all the more reason not to spend a lot of cash to make the individual's death seem more important then it ever really was.
Hank Hill built his own coffin. That sounds like a good idea to me.
Edit: You guys are also forgetting the budget minded vampire. I mean when you can only work maybe 6 hours or so at night, you're going to have to be frugal.
" @MB: yeah. i think coffins are stupid. 100 years from now, the earths surface changes you coffin could be 20 feet away from you tombstone lol. just get cremated. "
Not everyone feels that way, and to those people that prefer coffin burials, it doesn't really matter what happens to it after it's buried, so long as its resting place isn't disturbed by grave robbers or other vandals.
While it is most ceremonial, a coffin burial gives people peace of mind that the deceased is resting in peace and that loved ones can always visit their grave.
They'll be driving out all the coffin shops in the 'States!
Also; @clubsandwich said:
" We're sorry‚ we found 0 matches on Walmart.com for "coffin". You may have been searching for an item which we carry in our stores which is not listed on Walmart.com. hmmmm "
Unless someone bought them all for a Halloween ornament I've no idea where they could be now...
This is great. I've been involved with the purhcase of a casket. They are INCREDIBLY overpriced! If a loved one dies in your family, you better hope you have some money saved up if you want to bury them.
Maybe this will add some competition and help lower the prices. To all you young ones reading this: you are going to die, and so is everyone you know and care about. Prepare yourself for it. It is not strange. It is the rule.
Pshh, anyone who doesn't want to be frozen is a fool. Within a few thousand years, I can live again! Then they can use new technology to make me young again (if I die old) or fix me or whatever. I'm going to get to hang out with hot aliens while all of you won't be doing anything cause you're dead. The best part? It'll feel like just a few seconds passed from my death to living hundreds of years into the future!
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