I had to last minute cancel a service at this establishment. The smell was so bad there was no way…read morewe could have invited fam and friends to go to the service there! They told me they were remodeling and the smell was from mold. It would be gone b4 the service for our beloved Gary. We had to go down there several getting paperwork right for victim assistance program. React time I went to visit the funeral home it as worse and worse. I mean I've worked at trauma hospitals and I've smelled death before and the smell was definitely that of decaying humans. There is like 4 different funeral Homes run out of this place. When we did a family visitation our loved one's body was in bad shape. When I felt around him I realized that there he had ice packed all around him and his body was decaying. Also I was unhappy about all the thinking I had to do as far as the package. Nothing was explained about prayer cards, guest book , and when I remembered not talking about these little but important things the owner or supervisor never explained any of this to us so when I remembered it was a scramble nearing the big day to pick out these items and the obituary and they got the flower order all wrong as well. What a bad experience at a very difficult time when we counted in the professionals to help us make sure all the little items that we needed were included I wasn't concerned so uuuuy

I do not recommend this place to anyone. I contacted this place after my fiance passed away, after…read morespeaking with the receptionist who was very nice and pleasant and easy to talk to, I decided to go with Sterling & Smith. I regret it. I had quite a few appointments with them. The first one was just to get pricing in which my case manager hadn't even gaven me her name to refer back to her. The second appointment with zoey, no one told me I needed to bring in any documents. No one told me anything about what to bring . We sat down and talked about the prices and services. She spelled my fiance's name wrong in which I corrected her. I actually respelled it out for her 2x and I thought she had corrected it. She was very pleased and seemed sympathetic to my loss. This was the first time ever dealing with anything of this sort. The short viewing for close family members went fine. Except they never contacted me to tell me when his body got there, or to schedule the viewing- I called them each time. But when it came time to planning the memorial that's where everything went bad. Zoey had spelled my fiance's name wrong on the death certificate even after correcting her the first time and respelling it 2x the first time. Before our scheduled appointment to go over memorial details, I gave her his birth certificate and she was trying to downplay her error as something minor. Anyhow, she had no office to talk to me in, so we went into someone's office until they showed up, interrupting her presentation and throwing her off guard. So we can shuffled to the next room. In that room I'm looking at a prayer book as she escorts herself out of the room, she leaves the door open. As I'm having a hard time finding a prayer that I like, there's people about 3 ft away in the hallway just staring into the room that I'm in and it got so loud, I finally close the door. After not having a table to hold the flimsy book, I find the prayer that I like and that's when Zoe told me I went too far and I was only supposed to pick from the first 20 pages. There were like 60 pages to choose from. Theyre book of selections had things that they weren't even using anymore. She didn't even know why they were still in the book. Because of all the noise, I couldn't concentrate so I said I would schedule another appointment at at time when they weren' so busy. My appointment was at 10am. I called later around 4ish to cancel the memorial services and I wanted my money back after paying her in cash that morning. She said they had already taken the money to the bank and they would write me a check for it. Everytime, dealing with Zoey, I have had to reach out to them- because this place doesn't call you back. Now I find out, that my money is in Bakersfield with a "private accountant" and that my money will be mailed to me. No one- including the manager of sterling and smith will even give me this "private accountants" name to verify this is even true and now to fix the death certificate it will take even longer to fix it because Zoey has to go to my fiances doctor to correct the error. Why would she need to go to the doctor to fix something in which I gave her the birth certificate for. The manager of sterling and smith isnt even mentioned in the website. They also falsely advertise. In their website- they say they help with personalizations at memorial services. But when the issue came up, Zoey said they don't provide them. I just want to be done with this place. As it is, I took them 3 necklaces to be filled, 1 necklace could not be filed due to 3 people trying to open it and couldn't, or they couldn't close the necklace the correct way without stripping the screw. These necklaces were ordered on Amazon and we're custom made, so now I have to take it back. I just want to be done with this place. Everyone here was nice and pleasant, but I think if they had more funeral directors, and a bigger office, maybe Zoey could have done a better job. She maybe overloaded with work- but this is a job a person can't mess up with. This has been my worst experience ever