Pacific Internment was strongly recommended, to me. A few years ago when I went to the San Francisco office to make advance arrangements the staff was completely helpful and professional. Upon her recent death at age 95, the fellows who came to retrieve my mother's body were very sympathetic. Pacific Internment did fine with the the paperwork, ordering the urn, etc. etc. THIS REVIEW IS ONLY ABOUT THEIR OFFICE MANAGER.
I am glad for everyone who has a professional /sympathetic experience with her, unfortunately for me, my experience was that this person, on the phone, was always impatient. Not what you want when talking with someone about the 'cremains' of your mother. Not what you anticipate from the front of office person at a mortuary.
A few highlights from the phone conversations follow =
*My first phone call with this person was probably 24 hours after my mother died. This person did not identify themselves by name when they answered the phone, and in our conversation I addressed this person as "Sir". I really couldn't know by the voice and maybe my head was stuffed up from crying. During that call right before this person put me on hold to check some thing she said, with great emphasis, "And I'm NOT a Sir!!".
* Another call, when asking about home delivery of the urn I asked if she could tell me what's the "window of delivery times". With obvious exasperation at my question, she repeated over and over again "I can't give you an exact time, I can't give you an exact time, there's traffic, there's all kinds of things that affect what time they would deliver". I said I understand that, can you please tell me what the window of time for deliveries is? "NO! I can't give you an exact time!" Finally I thought to say "between what time and what time do they do the deliveries? ". Then I got the answer "between 10 and 4". Ahh. So this person does not know what the term window of time means for deliveries, but she got mad at me.
* I had a concern about certain neighbors seeing a vehicle with signage on it from a mortuary. When I simply asked "can you tell me what kind of vehicle they use for the deliveries?", instead of giving me the benefit of the doubt that I might have a reason for that question I was IMMEDIATELY subjected to the following= "A VEHICLE THAT RUNS ON GAS!! A VEHICLE THAT DRIVES DOWN THE STREET!! WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?!? WHAT DOES IT MATTER?!" And yes she kinda yelled at me, and yes she repeated those words at me, just like that, more than once. During these unpleasant conversations I tried using little bit of death humor "I only have one mother so this is my first time doing this". But no, that made no difference. I went so far as to explain "I'm the only surviving family member and taking care of many details, so I may be asking you some thing I already asked a few weeks ago ", but that made no difference. No patience, no respect, for a grieving daughter?
In conclusion, when I saw Carol in person to retrieve the ashes it was quiet and professional. But what was going on with this person on the telephone. smh
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