Our families first contact with this funeralhome was a woman by the name of Linda Roy. After introductions, the first thing out of her mouth was, "We need the money up front". No wonder, after what transpired afterward.
We were not given an itemized statement of charges until we asked for it; just an amount.
My 18-year-old daughter's body had to be flown from another state. The itemized list we got when we asked for it charged $2500 dollars for the transport and the embalming. My mother called the airlines when she saw this, and was told the cost was $265. When confronted with this, the funeralhome dropped the price to $1,000. My guess is the extra was the embalming charge, but we will never know, as the itemized list did not include items from the out-of-state funeralhome.
Linda Roy then took two days off during the planning of the funeral, supposedly due to illness. This caused major problems, as no one else took the reigns until two days before the funeral. Example: The funeralhome offered a slideshow, and so out-of-state relatives sent pictures via email as Linda said to. However, Linda had taken the two days off, and no one at the funeralhome could get into her email (or so they said. Why not just call her to get the password?). As a result, our family did not get to review the slideshow, and saw it for the first time at the funeral.
Now...the lost dress...
We wanted my daughter to be laid out in her junior prom dress. My mother brought the dress to them the day after talking to Linda Roy. However, two days after that, we received a call from someone at the funeralhome demanding (yes, demanding) that we bring the dress. My mother replied she had already brought the dress to them, and they asked her, "Where is it?" What? Two days later they called and said they had "found" the dress.
After we got the itemized list, we saw that CraigFuneralHome had taken the liberty of charging us for things that were optional and we were not consulted about. This included a $200 guest book. We told them that was outrageous, and we got a nice one from Hallmark for $25. This, and the body delivery charge are only two examples of the rip-off this funeralhome was trying to con us into. Taking advantage of the bereaved is horrid.
These people were only interested in our money... that became painfully obvious by their increasing agitation and rudeness when we began to question the charges on the itemized list.
Rusty Hall took over for Linda because she was sick. Although he tried to make amends, it became obvious this was for show. He was the assigned observer at my daughter's funeral; however, he left her funeral when someone came in wanting to arrange a funeral of their own.
After the funeral, some friends wanted to look at urns for themselves. However, they had to wait, as the "product room" and the funeral arrangement room are one and the same. Rusty Hall was in the room with the people he had left my daughter's funeral to arrange. We waited 20-30 minutes before we were allowed in to view the urns.
I saw my daughter's body before the funeral. She looked better before they made her up. In other words, they made her look worse. We paid for this terrible make-up job.
Because Linda Roy was sick, and no one took over the arranging of my daughter's funeral for three days, we were then expected to hurry up and get things done. They called us demanding that we do this and do that. Since the delay in planning was their fault (due to Linda's absence), it was rather arrogant of them to call us in a rude and nasty tone of voice to get us to "hurry up" and do things. I believe this delay was intentional because we opted out of the "package" and wanted to buy some nicer, cheaper things for my daughter.
After the funeral was over, a distant friend whom we hadn't talked to in a while, but ran into, told us that she had a horrible time with them as well when her husband died.
In conclusion:
If you are looking to be treated nastily, be ripped-off, have a terrible-looking deceased relative (or friend) laid out, or don't want any kind of respect shown to you or your deceased loved one, this is the place to get your funeral arranged.
However...
If you are looking for good, compassionate (or even friendly) service, look elsewhere. You won't find it here.
I want to add that this is just a sampling of the problems we had with this funeralhome. If I went into full detail, this would be far too lengthy.
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