It’s been awhile since my last blog. Life has been a little hectic with work, babies, and on top of it, I joined the board/committees of three different organizations this past year. I know, I know, I still haven’t learned how to say no.
There is a topic that particularly upset me this past summer, and when talking about it with my Father, he said, “You need to write a blog about it!” So here I am, putting my thoughts down and warning families about this atrocious scam!
Over the summer we had a family who called asking for cremation prices, this is a typical occurrence in our industry, the difference was that the decedent passed away in Pittsburgh. An out-of-town death, prompts adding an extra charge for long distance traveling. I explained this to the family, but I understood that they were looking for the lowest price possible due to their circumstances. I advised that the best route would be to call a funeral home in Pittsburgh that way the price would be less expensive. I even went beyond just suggesting that route, I started calling around to find the most reasonable price that included everything the family wanted. I found a Pittsburgh funeral home that charged $1300 for the removal, paperwork, and cremation.
After the cremation took place, I met with the family to schedule visiting hours in Erie. I asked what funeral home they went through for the cremation, and the family gave a really disappointed look. I asked what happened. The family ended up looking up cremations online. They found a very promising website called Legacy Cremation Services. After calling and talking to this company, they were told the price would be $995. A huge drop from the Pittsburgh funeral home that I suggested. So they started the cremation process with that company, giving them all of their loved ones information, place of death, how many death certificates they needed, and communicating that they wanted to drive to Pittsburgh to pick up the cremated remains instead of having them shipped. The company started the process on their end and after two days they sent the final bill with everything needed to complete the cremation. The total was $1709.80. I couldn’t believe it! At that point, the family felt they had no choice to find a different funeral home since they were already out three days of their loved one passing away.
The family allowed me to look at the invoice to see what happened. Legacy Cremation Services, LLC is not a Pennsylvania company, they are based out of Denver, Colorado. They are a middleman cremation service, they will do all of the gathering of information, but then they source out the removal from the place of death, the cremation itself, filing of the death certificate, etc. The price for them to be involved was $995, but additional prices were added by the PA Funeral Home that had to do all the work. I was appalled to see additional charges that were not needed such as a heavy duty body bag ($145) for the removal, even though every hospital provides a body bag already. The coroner authorization for cremation in Allegheny County is $50 but the invoice said $95. Of course there were other charges that were necessary, but it makes sense why people have a dislike of funeral homes and funeral directors, when we have companies like this one taking advantage of people, roping them in with extremely low prices, and then adding additional charges after they have already committed.
If you are calling around looking for cremation prices, please make sure that the price they give includes the removal, the coroner authorization, the filing of paperwork, the cremation container required by the state for cremation (cardboard box that the body is placed into before the cremation occurs), and of course the cremation itself. I want people to be aware of these companies. The state of Pennsylvania is looking into requiring funeral homes to put their price list online in order to avoid these types of cases. It has not passed yet, but OUR prices have been on our website for years. We don’t hide our prices from anyone, but there are still many funeral homes that are fighting this law. Do your research online and over the phone, you can tell a lot about the company with that first conversation!
God Bless and I hope you all had a wonderful summer,
Adrienne (Kloecker) Kalivoda
Bringing A New Face to the Funeral Business