Please reconsider doing business with Evergreen. Unfortunately, our family has had an unpleasant experience with them. Our beloved mother entrusted Evergreen with providing the headstone and gravesite upon her death, due to our grandmother being buried at the same site. She placed her deposit months prior to her death, and I continued payments in August after she was deceased in April of last year. I sent payments to catch up on the missed payments after she passed away, while keeping track of all payments and statements sent to and from Evergreen.
Everything was going as planned until I had an uncomfortable and inappropriate telephone conversation with Marcus, who works in the office, when I spoke to him regarding our mother's account. During this conversation, it took a turn when Marcus began asking inappropriate questions about my personal life. His topic of conversation had NOTHING to do with my mother or the original conversation. I was thrown off guard by the questions and felt very uncomfortable in response to his problematic probing. The conversation did not make sense, so I re-steered it back to the original topic. After this conversation, I immediately contacted my brother and explained the situation. He contacted Mr. Bell and let him know how unprofessional he was towards me, especially someone grieving the recent loss of their mother. From this point on, I had my brother as the new point of contact, so I would not have to deal with Marcus regarding the headstone.
In January of this year, my brother contacted Marcus about the final balance on the headstone because we were going to send the last payment. Marcus sent a screenshot of the final balance from his ledger on his computer and assured us it was correct. Meanwhile, the statements sent to us did not reflect the ledger balance, which my brother questioned, yet Marcus assured my brother that the ledger balance was indeed correct. I sent the large final payment, excluding the December $184.00 payment (which had not yet been reflected in the ledger as of the phone call), along with a letter detailing the final payment and a copy of the December statement showing an over-$1,000 discrepancy from the ledger balance and asking Evergreen to reconcile and update their statements.
At the end of January, my brother contacted Evergreen again to see if the payment had been received. We were informed that they had not received the payment because payments go to a different off-site P.O. Box and they do not check the box daily. My brother was asked to check back in a few days. He called Evergreen about a week later, and the check had been received. Per Marcus, the payment was IN FULL, and once again, assured us that nothing further was owed on the balance. He then stated that Evergreen would begin working on our mother's headstone and that it would take at least eight weeks to complete. This was at the beginning of February.
Scroll to April, received a call from a family member stating that he had just paid off a balance from Evergreen of about $200! I was shocked because we were explicitly told there was no longer a balance as of February. I had my brother contact Evergreen immediately to find out what was going on. The Blake who is in the onsite office tried to tell him that there was yet another $180 owed on the account, and that they had NOT begun the process of creating the headstone! Our family is planning a one-year anniversary trip for our mother this month, which is completely unacceptable. My brother let him know that their records were incorrect, that their business management is unprofessional and unethical with their accounts, that they never reached out to us regarding any balance owed since the conversation in February, that we were NOT paying anything further, and that we expect a headstone by the time we arrive in late April. Evergreen stated that they "dropped the ball," so to speak, and would "eat the $180 and rush costs" to place the headstone order, especially after realizing we were coming to visit. Evergreen didn't think we would notice them adding money to our mother's paid-in-full account, even though I kept detailed records of every statement and payment, along with my mother's records, including written correspondence to back up each payment. So now, the headstone that should have been completed in early April is just now being worked on, after we realized it had never been started because of some "additional balance" nonsense, even though we had already paid the balance in full!
How Evergreen treats grieving family members and tries to trick them into paying additional unaccounted-for money is appalling and infuriating. I am just saddened and heartbroken that our mother may not even have a headstone a year after her death. She and our family deserve better than what Evergreen offers, given their poor customer service and questionable business practices. read more
