Jul 25, 2008 6:25 pm US/Pacific
Bay Area Family Endures Funeral Home Nightmare
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS 5) ―
A Bay Area family is grieving the death of a relative say a San Francisco funeral home made their lives even more difficult.
The family of Rayfield Raglor of said losing their loved one the first time was God's will. They never thought they would lose him two more times.
A voice raised in song—that's how people remember Rayfield Raglor.
"He was a fun-loving person," his wife Jean said. "He was an entertainer."
But his rich baritone began to fade as leukemia took over his body. And when he died in March, Jean's sister Deborah called Bayview Funeral Services in San Francisco, the mortuary the family had trusted over the years to make final arrangements for other relatives.
Jean and Deborah say Bayview sent a van to pick up the body and told the family to come by the next day. But when they rang the front door bell for their appointment, they say a women came on the intercom and told them Bayview was closed—and that Rayfield Raglor's body wasn't there.
"We were just standing there, in shock, confused," Deborah recalled.
"We were looking at each other," Jean said. "I'm thinking, 'What happened to his body?'"
Frantic, they rang the front door bell again. Finally, they say, the woman on the intercom told them to try a different mortuary, called "Funerals by Washington." Once they were able to locate it, they were ushered in by the mortuary's counselor, Donald Rollins.
"We asked him, 'Is Rayfield Raglor here?'" recalled Deborah. "He said, 'Yes, I have him here.'"
But their relief turned to shock, they say, when Rollins told the family they owed Funerals by Washington money because the mortuary had already embalmed Rayfield's body—before they had signed a contract.
Rayfield's niece, Stacy said, "We only contacted Bayview mortuary, not Funerals by Washington. We had never been to Funerals by Washington."
So Rayfield Raglor's family asked CBS 5 Investigates to check how does this happen. They are not the only ones complaining. In fact, there's a trail of complaints about Funerals by Washington going back at least six years: about bad service, broken contracts, even a claim of fraud. And then there's the confusion over just which funeral home are you calling.
Bayview would only tell us that their phone number had been "hijacked". So CBS 5 Investigates went to Funerals by Washington to find out more. Climbing the front stairs, we were greeted by that counselor, Donald Rollins. When asked him how a phone call to Bayview Funeral Services could end up at Funerals By Washington, he told me that there was a problem with the phone company.
CBS 5 Investigates asked Rollins, "Well why don't you fix the problems with the phones so people aren't confused?"
"I don't know," Rollins said. "I don't know what's going on with it. They're working on it."
What about the Raglor family's complaints? "They're not telling the truth," said Rollins.
"You're saying they're lying?" Rollins was asked.
"I'm not saying they're lying, but they called us. We wouldn't went to get the body unless they called us," Rollins said.
Rollins was also asked about the embalming. "They say you told them they could go someplace else but the body was embalmed and they'd have to pay," CBS 5 Investigates asked.
"No, I did not tell them that," he responded.
Money was also another issue that CBS 5 Investigates wanted to ask him about. Raglor's family paid Funerals by Washington in full—almost $11,000—some of which the mortuary was supposed to use to pay for Rayfield's burial at Olivet Cemetery in Colma.
Yet a few days after the funeral, Rayfield's widow started getting collection notices.
"Saying that I owe them money," Jean said. Why was he getting the notices? The cemetery told the family that—although it did receive a check for payment from Funerals by Washington—that check bounced. So the cemetery wanted Jean to pay again.
"To give someone a check and have it returned for insufficient funds," said Jean, "what kind of a business are you running?"
CBS 5 asked Donald Rollins about that bounced check to the cemetery. "That's, see, that has nothing to do with me," said Rollins. "The owner takes care of that. His name is Derek."
Derek Washington owns Funerals by Washington. He declined to answer questions on camera, but said by phone that the family is exaggerating—and that the mortuary's payment to the cemetery has been "taken care of." But as CBS 5 Investigates found out, that's not so.
"Which is why, when Rayfield Ragler's wife and children went to the cemetery recently, they searched and searched, but could not find his grave site. Because of the delays, there's no headstone on Rayfield's grave. And until it's there, Jean said she will feel Rayfield's loss over and over again.
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