Our visit here to arrange our Mums funeral went smooth enough. Fast forward over 3 weeks later to the day of her funeral and the disaster started to unfold.
My mum had organised her own funeral down to the coffin she wanted. While waiting outside the church half an hour before the service was due to begin my brother received a call from Francis Chappell saying there was a problem with the coffin my Mum had selected and it hadn’t turned up at the funeral home in time. She would therefore be in a totally different coffin, completely different to her choice. We had no option other than to accept this as there was already 40 people at the church waiting for the service to start.
On arrival the coffin was indeed completely different. A dark mahogany basic looking casket in contrast to the night wood premium one our Mum had chosen.
The chapel where our Mums service was held is very old and quite small but we were reassured on the day we arranged they had previously held several funerals there and were well experienced with the issues faced. But on arrival the four pallbearers struggled with the coffin getting in the door which resulted them dropping the coffin to knee height and almost dropping our Mum completely in the aisle. They then proceeded to shuffle the rest of the way up the aisle. It wasn’t helped that there at least a foot of height difference between the tallest and shortest pallbearer. It also appeared the smallest one was wearing the biggest ones suit!
When the service was over the pallbearers went to lift the coffin into their shoulders directed by the lead funeral director. It ended up with three of them facing the exit but the other guy was facing the other way. All the time our Mum was balanced gingerly on their shoulders.
On going back to the funeral cars things didn’t get any better. One of the cars had accident damage, the car we were in had used tissues in the door even though we were the first funeral of the morning. As we left Falconwood crematorium the driver didn’t the way and ended using his phone ( not hands free)to call the other driver to slow him down.
The whole event was extremely distressing to our whole family and we did complain to Dignity who own Francis Chappell. The found in our favour in all 8 or so things we raised, but saying that the compensation they offered us was an insult which only added to the distress.
So after our experience I would say think very carefully before you make a choice of who looks after your loved one on their final journey. You only get one go at it…
