Made the funeral more stressful for us.

My mother-in-law passed on and had a policy with them. But after our experience, I am looking to going elsewhere. Firstly on the day before the funeral, we get told at the Bluff branch that if we don't pay the premium the claim won't go through, and we would not be able to have the funeral, so we pay the premium.

The next day we get to the funeral and when we get there, we get told that we are late and the funeral needs to start immediately, but the week before we confirmed the time with the consultant for 1 pm, I even designed and sent her the programme with 1pm as the time on it but they advertised and set it for 12 pm. When I called I was told they never told me 1pm they said 12pm but we discussed 1pm as i made notes. So when we arrived, some of the family had not arrived and we had to beg them to hold off to start so more people could come. We eventually had to start even though we were waiting for more people to arrive. This was very stressful, emotional and embarrassing on the day we are laying her to rest.

I was also asked when I went to view the body if anyone called me with regards to the makeup as the lady that does the makeup was on leave, no one called me about it so my mother had no make-up on, lucky I had lipstick in my bag so I could try and make her look ok.

We asked and paid for blue and white roses, but what was on the casket was not blue and white roses, and we took the flowers home, they died the next day and was covered in worms. That tells me the flowers were not fresh.

We also told the consultant in the beginning that we wanted the marble Urn, we paid for a Marble Urn. Today when we collected the ashes they were handed to us in a cardboard box, with a cheap plastic plate. When my mother complained about it, saying we asked and paid for a marble urn, she was given an epoxy resin box that was the display unit for the branch. This is unacceptable, we paid for a marble urn.

This is really not called for, they made an emotional day stressful and sad for us. I was trying to get hold of management to get this sorted out but could not so hence I am now voicing my concerns on here. I would not advise any of my friends or family to go with them.