Petersen Family Funeral Home

Our family has used Petersen Funeral Home for a few services for family members through the years. My parents had met with them years before they passed away and Petersens still had the folder of information from their meeting and gave use some hints about what the parents had wanted.I have always thought they did a professional job, and were a comfort during times of family stress after a loss.

I was disappointed with several things that happened around our family's services. First, Charlie printed the bulletin without any of our information and then decided not to bother to reprint even when he knew that we were expecting it. Fortunately, someone in the office decided that it was important enough to correct, reprint, and deliver, albeit after the service concluded. None of the beautiful flower arrangements made it in time for the service. The flowers were prepared the night before and there was no reason that they could not have been delivered on time, but there was no communication between the funeral home and the florist. Charlie clearly has some issue with Dillon's and encouraged us to use his chosen florist for the casket spray which cost more than twice another local florist.Charlie recommended the pastor of Good Shepherd Hospice and told us that he would be very good, saying he would speak short, but deep. Somehow John didn't have a clue that he was going to do anything. Neither Charlie nor John helped with the Order of Service so I had to do it from Internet research. I went over the Order of Service with John the day before by phone. Even so, he stopped mid-service and asked me who was doing the eulogy. I said "You are." He said he didn't prepare anything. I told him to do something and then he just skipped over it and did nothing, but moved on to our remembrances. We were incredulous. Evidently Charlie didn't bother to communicate with John either.Charlie decided unilaterally that the obituary should not run in the Newton Kansan. He said it was expensive and someone else on his team said it would cost $800-$1000. Absolutely false! So, I had the obituary run in the Newton Kansan myself and paid for it. It cost $77.50. Why would you even say that??? I also paid the charge for the engraving of the stone directly for half the cost given by Charlie.I called Charlie several times only to be told that he was with another family or at a service or at the doctor's office and for some reason just didn't bother to call me back. I called the pastor for days and couldn't reach him either. It really felt like they just didn't care at all during our intense time of grief. Why bother with details??? Isn't that their job?And then we were charged $290 for an obituary that did not run and another that ran for no charge. I am really surprised by our experience. I had heard good things about Petersen's, but granted this was years back when I purchased the funeral plan. I hope our experience was an anomaly and not the norm, but with Charlie in charge, I have my doubts. I tried to work around Charlie, but he said there was no one else I could talk to. It was a mind boggling experience if it wasn't hard enough already.