Why are the much-criticized sky-high funeral expenses repeated over and over again?
Judges of Beijing Fourth Intermediate People's Court analyze the chaos of funeral charges and countermeasures
□ Our reporter Xu Weilun
□ Qin Jin, correspondent of this newspaper
Relatives' remains are stored in the mortuary for less than 3 days, and the fee is more than 38,000 yuan... The mortuary funeral service outsourcing company of Peking University Third Hospital has recently attracted social attention. , which caused the crowd to complain.
People can't help but ask: The sky-high funeral expenses have been criticized in recent years, why are they repeatedly banned?
What is the reason for the sky-high funeral costs? How should people take up legal weapons to protect their rights in the face of sky-high funeral costs? How should the chaos in the funeral industry be rectified?
With these questions in mind, a reporter from the "Rules of Law Daily" recently interviewed a judge of the Beijing Fourth Intermediate People's Court.
The judge of the Beijing Fourth Intermediate People's Court said that most of the sky-high funeral expenses are concealed to a certain extent. Some consumers are not informed of the relevant service content until the funeral is settled, and some businesses inform consumers of the types of funeral services but do not express the price. .
In addition, some merchants strongly promote "one-stop service" for bundled transactions, and funeral service practitioners in some cities have jointly violated price management regulations and implemented price monopoly, which makes consumers lose their bargaining power and have to pay much higher than the guide price. price.
The judge said that if consumers encounter the above-mentioned "hidden rules" in the process of accepting funeral services, causing personal or property damage, they can protect their rights in accordance with my country's Civil Code, the Consumer Rights Protection Law and other laws and regulations.
The funeral industry has both public welfare and market attributes. Relevant departments should jointly promote diversified governance, clarify industry charging standards, and regulate the healthy development of the industry.
The industry as a whole lacks entry barriers
Multiple factors breed sky-high funeral expenses
Funeral ceremonies are people's last farewell to life, but some companies have made ill-gotten gains from them, making funeral expenses high for a long time.
The judge of the Beijing Fourth Intermediate People's Court believes that consumers suffer great grief when their relatives pass away and lack awareness of rights protection against unreasonable charges; people know little about funeral matters due to taboos and other reasons, and they often do not know the reasonable price of funeral expenses when conducting funerals. There are still many people who have the mentality of "don't ask the price for funerals", "spend money to buy comfort", "the more you spend, the more filial piety", these provide the soil for the generation of sky-high funeral expenses, and breed a series of industries chaos.
In addition, the funeral industry is an unpopular industry, and the practitioners are mixed. In addition, the process of funeral matters is complicated, and there are many institutions involved. In order to pursue interests, some funeral institutions use the gray area of the industry to charge sky-high prices.
In some areas, there are unlicensed operations or strict organizations formed by funeral service personnel, monopolizing the regional funeral market through illegal acts and reaping huge profits.
The judge pointed out that the current funeral industry has not yet formed a healthy market competition, the industry supervision and guidance functions are absent, the industry as a whole lacks access thresholds, and there are no specific supervision and punishment measures for non-standard funeral enterprises.
The "loose" soil has even spawned gangs involved in the funeral industry that "use business to raise black people". They monopolize the local funeral business and arbitrarily increase product prices through various means such as robbing corpses for living, asking prices for corpses, and forcing transactions. For example, in 2018 "Fang Dasheng's gang-related case" heard by the Yaohai District People's Court in Hefei City, Anhui Province.
In addition, some hospitals contracted mortuaries to funeral companies for management. In order to seize business, some companies interfered and disrupted the normal working order of the hospital, causing the families who were already in grief to suffer secondary psychological trauma.
Regarding the recent high-priced funeral expenses incident with strong social response, the Beijing Municipal Health Commission stated that in order to further standardize and strengthen the management of hospital mortuaries and funeral services, Beijing will strengthen the investigation and management of the mortuary management field, and prohibit any conduct in the hospital mortuary area. For-profit funeral services, carry out related work in accordance with laws and regulations; each hospital should implement its supervision responsibilities, and for the funeral service institutions that are currently cooperating to carry out work, they must perform supervision duties in the cooperation agreement and in their daily work. For unqualified funeral services The agency immediately ordered it to stop serving.
Consumers are not obligated to pay
Fraudulent bundled consumption can be reversed
Regarding the common "consumed" chaos, the judge of the Beijing Fourth Intermediate People's Court said that because consumers did not choose specific services in advance, they were informed by merchants to accept a certain service after the entire funeral process was completed. According to the Civil Code It is stipulated that such a civil juristic act in which the parties' intentions are inconsistent is invalid.
That is to say, since the consumer did not choose to express his true intention to purchase the service, this part of the contract has not been established since the beginning, and the consumer does not need to bear the corresponding payment obligation.
In the chaos of "fraudulent consumption", some funeral companies only inform the service items when providing services, but do not indicate whether the charges and the corresponding prices, maliciously vaguely describe the service content and service prices, and start the price depending on the identity of the family members after the completion of all the ceremonies.
In this regard, the judge pointed out that according to the Consumer Rights Protection Law, consumers have the right to know the real situation of the goods they buy and use or the services they receive.
Merchants' failure to inform relevant services and standards in advance will cause information asymmetry and infringe on consumers' right to know, which is a fraudulent act. Consumers can request the people's court or arbitration institution to revoke the relevant consumption behavior in such a situation.
In the chaos of "bundled consumption", some merchants bundled and sold high-priced flowers, shrouds, elegiac couplets, etc. in necessary services such as mortuary, cleaning, and transportation, otherwise they refused to provide basic services; or forced consumers to buy "one-stop service" , and force consumers to buy additional funeral supplies with various inauspicious rhetoric.
According to the Civil Code, if a party or a third party uses coercion to cause the other party to commit a civil juristic act contrary to its true will, the coerced party has the right to request the people's court or arbitration institution to revoke it.
In addition, if consumers find that funeral companies have monopolized pricing behavior and make them overpay, they can request administrative departments and consumer associations to intervene in supervision to safeguard their legitimate rights and interests.
The judge of the Beijing Fourth Intermediate People's Court pointed out that if the consumer association finds that the price monopoly infringes the legitimate rights and interests of many consumers, it should actively perform its statutory duty of public interest litigation.
Increase government investment and reduce fees
Diversified governance regulates the funeral industry
"In view of the composite characteristics of both public welfare attributes and market attributes in the funeral industry, the self-discipline mechanism of the industry and the management of market supervision departments have overlapping powers. Regulating the business behavior of the industry and the delineation of pricing standards requires the cooperation of multiple parties to promote multiple governance." Beijing. The fourth court judge said.
The judge believes that the civil affairs and market supervision and management departments should clarify the relevant charging policies, strengthen the supervision of charging behaviors, increase policy publicity and illegal penalties, improve supporting policies, and guide the funeral industry.
For basic funeral services, such as body transportation, storage, cremation, ashes storage and other fields, strengthen its public welfare attributes, increase government investment, and reduce various fees.
Hospitals and other entrusting entities should also strengthen the supervision and restraint of mortuary contractors, expand the scope of their outsourcing to provide various funeral services and accept supervision, and assume corresponding responsibilities through normalized supervision and inspection, signing responsibility letters, and timely termination of contracts with defaulting institutions.
The funeral industry association should effectively strengthen industry management and clarify industry charging standards. Where charging items are involved, service terms and instructions should be clearly displayed in a conspicuous position in the service place. It can also promote industry self-discipline and improve funeral services by regularly holding funeral service agency service appraisals. Service Level.
Industry associations can also send special personnel to funeral homes to provide consulting services and set up suggestion boxes to explain the process and price of funeral ceremonies to consumers, so as to ensure consumers' right to know.
The judge reminded that consumers should improve their awareness of prevention and rights protection, and actively avoid legal risks that may exist in the process of funeral services by signing written contracts in advance, inquiring about prices in advance, and inquiring about the operating qualifications of funeral service providers, and participating in supervision in the later stage. , get rid of the mentality of "self-confessed bad luck", pay attention to collecting and retaining evidence when being cheated or forced to consume, and report to relevant departments in a timely manner.
"Consumers should also establish a new burial fashion of 'rich burial', practice green burial, ecological burial, thrifty burial, and eradicate the living soil of 'highly expensive funeral expenses'," the judge said.