One-Foot-in-The-Grave: 50% Discount on Tombstones

türkçe links to original Turkish article

(Milliyet Newspaper, 20 April 2018)


Coming soon: 50% off for mothers-in-law before they pass.

In Muş's Varto district, granite and marble dealer Bayram Çetinkaya
has started an interesting sales campaign.  Çetinkaya will give a 50%
discount to anyone who orders a gravestone before they die.  His
prices range from 800 TL (about $200) to 18,000 TL.  Çetinkaya is
also offering a 20% discount for those who passed away in 2017 and
will soon offer a 50% discount for a gravestone for mothers-in-law
before they die (!).

Çetinkaya explained that his campaign started as the result of a
conversation with an elderly woman: "She came to me and said
'I want to have a gravestone made for my husband but my income
is only 600 TL every 3 months.  My choice is to live or to buy him
a gravestone.  I have no one else since he died and he comes to me
in my dreams because I haven't had a gravestone made for him and
this makes me cry'."

Continuing, Çetinkaya said that "I told her I don't deal in cheap
stones but a few days later I saw her in my dreams and felt bad. A
couple of weeks later I saw her in the market and asked her what
she had done.  When she said she still hadn't had a gravestone
made, I offered to help her.  I made a nice gravestone for her
husband and arranged for  her to pay me 100 TL every 3 months. 
My business got much better after this. I told Yüksel Bey, who has
a marble factory in Afyon, about this occurrence.   He told me
to start the campaign and promised his support.  So, together with
the customer, before they die, we go to a notary and sign an
agreement for a gravestone.  I had one such customer last year."

Çetinkaya urged his gravestone-making colleagues and other
craftsmen to start similar before-you-die campaigns.