If you are considering Richardson Peterson/Deco Familia after a major and sudden loss, my advice is…read moreuncomplicated: go somewhere else.
My wife and I came here after losing our pregnancy at 13 weeks. We were devastated. The hospital explained that having the remains cremated and returned to us required arrangements through a funeral home. We wanted to bring our loss home and begin moving forward.
Grief, it turns out, involves a surprising amount of administration. Forms. Phone calls. Authorizations. Prices. Appointments.
And, in our case, an apparently reserved chair.
I found Richardson Peterson because they advertised 24/7 availability. I called the evening of July 23 and discovered that "available 24/7" meant reaching a third-party call handler, who took my information and connected me with Laura Galicia. We made an appointment for the following day.
Even arriving was confusing: multiple doors, a locked entrance, a doorbell, and no clear indication of what a grieving family standing outside is supposed to do. This would be a petty complaint about a dry cleaner. A funeral home is different.
Eventually we were let inside and seated at a small round table with four chairs. I sat down and was told I needed to move.
It was "Laura's seat."
At a round table.
With four chairs.
Laura herself was not occupying Laura's Seat because Laura was late.
She would be late again.
When Laura arrived, we went through the arrangements before she returned with our quote: $900.
My wife and I looked at each other. We had researched what this might cost, and $900 was considerably more than expected. We explained that this was our first quote and we needed to compare prices.
Laura told us she would hate for us to have to drive around getting quotes during such a trying time.
Then $900 became $500.
Same cremation. Same remains. Same funeral home. Same round table.
The only material fact that had changed was that we said we might leave.
Four hundred dollars disappeared. A 44% reduction.
There may be some perfectly ordinary explanation for how a service presented to two grieving parents as costing $900 can, within the same conversation, cost $500 once they mention comparison shopping.
Nobody provided that explanation to us.
During the same meeting, Laura mentioned two nonprofits that might help and promised to follow up. She didn't. I called for an update, then had to call again. On the second call, Laura started giving me information we'd already discussed about the first nonprofit, and I had to remind her that we were waiting on the second. Eventually we learned neither could help.
This became the operating procedure: if we wanted information, we had to obtain it ourselves.
Between August 6 and August 18 alone, I placed five calls seeking updates. Three emails went unanswered, including one sent by Jerry, another employee, trying to help us get an answer. I even started calling Kaiser because surely some hospital bureaucracy must explain why we knew so little.
It didn't.
On August 14, I called Richardson Peterson again and reached Laura. I asked for an update. During the conversation she informed me, almost in passing, to the effect of: Oh, yes, we have the remains. We can send them for cremation early next week.
This required a moment to process.
They had the remains.
Richardson Peterson knew they had them.
We did not know they had them.
Nobody had called. Nobody had emailed. After all the attempts to get an update, the only reason I learned that the funeral home had received the remains from our pregnancy loss was because, once again, I called them.
We made an appointment for August 15 to make payment so the process could continue.
We arrived.
Laura did not.
She wasn't even on the premises.
This was our second scheduled appointment with Laura and the second time our appointment apparently occupied a more theoretical place on her schedule than on ours.
Thankfully, Jerry was there. He took our payment and eventually became our point person. To be fair, Jerry actually tried to help. He emailed on our behalf, stepped in when Laura wasn't there, and on August 28, he was finally the person who called to say the cremated remains were ready.
We brought them home the following day.
There are businesses where disorganization is irritating. There are businesses where questionable pricing leaves a bad taste in your mouth. A funeral home does not have the luxury of behaving like an ordinary badly run business.
My wife just wanted to grieve, bring our loss home, and move forward. Instead, we had to manage the funeral home while trying to manage our grief.
This experience made an already devastating situation unnecessarily harder.
I would not trust Richardson Peterson/Deco Familia with something this important again.
