Horrific Story, When Buying a Casket Online Goes Wrong

It has been a while since we posted anything about the online casket retailers, but this story could not be overlooked. Most of the time in the past when we have posted articles about funeral directors’ experiences with receiving caskets from online retailers the outcome has been overall positive. We even posted a review from a funeral director who received a casket from WalMart and his comments might surprise you.

This is the first case I have heard of that had such a horrible ending and this is the first reaction I have read where the buyer used Casketsite.com. After looking at their site it is surprising to me that more people haven’t come forward with the same horrible experience. The site claims it is selling name brand funeral products at discount prices. Some of the brands represented are Batesville Casket Company, Wilbert Burial Vaults, and Aurora Casket Company. The site is operated by Mountain High Funeral Home and they are an authorized dealer for Aurora, York, and Wilbert but not Batesville.

I am not sure how this works on the casket end, but from the vault side what has to take place is this:

The customer orders the Wilbert vault online. Because the Casketsite.com is really a funeral home, they call a local Wilbert licensee (who has the ability to transfer a Wilbert burial vault anywhere in the US and Canada to another Wilbert licensee in the area where the burial will take place). The local licensee then transfers the order to another Wilbert dealer where the service and burial will be held.

I can only see this working a few times. Soon the local licensee is going to catch wind that the funeral home (Mountain High Funeral Home) is basically reselling the vault which would not fly with the Wilbert licensee network and they will stop accepting transfer orders from the local Wilbert licensee as well as Mountain High.

I am not sure if this is how it works on the casket side or not. Maybe someone could explain. My guess is that Mountain High ordered a Batesville casket and wanted it shipped to somewhere other than their funeral home and Batesville wouldn’t do it (rightfully so).

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