If StoneMor Partners manages their rest of their companies like they manage Sunrise Memorial Gardens in Muskegon, MI then I recommend all of their investors call their brokers immediately and dump their stock like a radioactive hot glowing boulder. Since StoneMor took over the operation of Sunrise a few years back it has been a revolving door of inept employees “Managed By Fear”.
I have never seen people so afraid to make any decision, let alone the right one without calling their supervisor. I have never seen management so completely out of touch with an operation, seemingly incapable of training people to do a relatively simple job. Policies, procedures or prices change on a monthly basis. Nearly every family that we serve that has to deal with this company/cemetery comes back to us with terrible stories and complaints of pushy sales tactics, overpriced required merchandise purchases, expensive additional service charges for work that requires little time or effort and brown dried up grass overgrown with weeds. I cringe every time a family tells me they own property there.
The things that happened this week at Sunrise pushed me over the edge. Their treatment of families and the attitude of their staff was disgusting. I had a family tell me they were treated so rudely by a Sunrise staff person in the office that they wanted to punch her in the face. And another family was pressured into purchasing a vault, even though they had purchased one from the funeral home the day before. And when we thought we had that issue resolved they called me on the morning of the burial and told me they had already installed their vault so I was out of luck. Rather than fight the issue I did the right thing and had the vault company go back and pick up my vault. At the burial the family told me both employees were blaming each other for all the errors and confusion.
My complaints to the next level up got blown off by some cell phone carrying, car driving middle manager who gave a 5 minutes dissertation about how their mission is to work with families and funeral homes to provide the best care and services. What a bunch of crap. He and everyone at the place were just worried about meeting quota and how much commission they were going to get. He accused of us lying even though I can prove the time line of how things happened.(we met with the family on Sunday and they went to Sunrise on Monday)
We know some upper level folks that work for StoneMor and contacted them to see who we should talk to and got a few email addresses. Then we called the Michigan Cemetery Association to find out how we should handle our complaint and they said that no-one at StoneMor or the cemetery association would listen to funeral home complaints. It had to come from the family. But rather than put the family through any more grief I have decided to air my complaints here. I’m hoping this might get management’s attention a little sooner. And If anyone reading this has had challenges like this I invite you to comment below.
I want you all to know I’m not just some whiney pants funeral guy that lost a sale. I completely understand that this is business. I’ve been to sales seminars and understand the methods. And it’s all about getting to the customer first in many of these situations. But what’s going on here is borderline fraud and coercion. It’s stuff like this that puts death care in the headlines and gives everyone a black eye.
To paraphrase Dustin Hoffman’s character in the movie Rainman ….”StoneMor Sucks”
I’m Dale Clock. Thanks for Listening
Dale-Time 
Integrity is one of the most important of a leader and your integrity is impeccable . Brining up when someone is done wrong is ok especially if it was brought up to them and they didn’t make it right with her. They should have fixed the problem. It happens in my industry frequently. That’s why I left where I was. Integrity was more important. God bless you Dale.
Hi Mark, good for you! There are many GOOD cemeteries who care and who believe that ethics are everything- Honesty should be the number one prerequisite in working for a cemetery. If the management continuously fails to keep their word, if they allow on site management to steal sales of hard working family counselors who truly want to serve families in the best way possible- then it’s time to leave! The only way to stop management like this is to spread it all over social media
Oh my a friend posted this to me an I would love to get involved on making a complaint! where do i sign up.. This week has been by for the worst experience! Disrespect, rude, unprofessional! on top of all the arraignments i had to finalize i had to deal with childish calls from there an worry if my mother was going to be buried on time, an to charge me $150 per 1/2 hour come on now id call it robbing the dead by the family is paying for the outrageous charges i had to wait a whole norther day to lay her to rest.. then instead of the team working together it was against. an still the day i buried my mother i got it face to face.. ridiculous!
My mom and grandparents are buried here and every time I visit I am sickened to the core at the complete lack of care that they give to our loved ones in their final resting place! I spend more time pulling weeds and tidying up my moms space than actually getting to have a moment of time with her. One day I pulled in to see my mom, and they were preparing a plot a couple spaces away and they dumped all the dirt from that plot right on top of my moms headstone. I was raging angry! I grabbed someone from the building and told them to fix it now! How disrespectful! When they removed the dirt, they scratched my moms headstone with their shovels. So they had to remove the scratches as best as they could. I have never met a more unprofessional, disrespectful, lazy and asinine group of people than the folks at Sunrise Memorial Gardens, managed by StoneMor or should I say Couldn’t Suck More!
My Grandparents are also resting there. I know how you feel. I am totally disgusted with the care as well. I thank all of you for writing your complaints I have read most of them. There has to be something we can do. We trusted them with the care of our loved one. THEY SHOULD BE ASHAMED! THEY ARE TOTALLY DISRESPECTFUL!!
Jamie I have to agree with u i have a daughter that has been buried here and i swear the half of the time having her here has been a nightmare. Especially when thngs show up off her grave all the time or the cleaning people touch before it is time and u find your stuff in the back of the building. My husband had to pull weeds a lot around our plot. It just looks terrible up there. The grass is always so dry in the summer and the people are extrememly rude. I have talked with them on several occasions if i paid here i want my area cleaned.. They just don’t get it. I would never recommend to anyone unless they changed there ways and started keeping it clean like others and that what they have as employee stop being so rude. I know they told me at one pt. they higher manpower well they shouldn’t let them touch the gravesites. In my eyes i consider it stealing. But this place has a bunch of lazy and rude people working for them. We just went up there and they can’t even keep the side walks shoveled. Pretty bad u have to bring your own shovel if you want to get to your loved ones site.
I agree that they don’t take care of the property. My parents are there as well. My father inlaw is at Laketon and it is much nicer. Our dear friend was the person with the vault problem last week. Thank you or your help and compassion, Dale. I for one will vote with my feet.
My daughter is buried at Sunrise Memorial Gardens in the baby section. I have been dealing with this for 27 years. The day my daughter was buried, the cemetery messed up and didn’t dig her grave big enough. They asked me to sit in my car while they finished digging my daughters grave. That was horrible. The workers broke my daughter’s headstone when putting it in, it’s still that way today. Two years later my friends son was buried next to my daughter. They dug his grave so close to my daughter’s, I could see my daughter’s casket/vault throughout the whole service. My daughters birthday is in March and she passed away in November which is when they sweep the graves for the seasons, so every time I place flowers and stuff on her grave for those occasions the cemetery removes them and throws them in the dumpster. I actually had a manager tell me I should have been lucky enough to have a daughter be born in the summer and die in the summer so I could put stuff on her grave. I was told I was only allowed to have stuff on her grave when they turned up her vase(they have never done this) and on major holidays for 3 days only. The following summer management changed again along with the rules (no notice of changes of course), it was clear by the garbage laying all over the baby section. I was told by the new manager he was going to be more lenient in this section for grieving parents. The monument that is beside my daughter is falling apart, the walkway is a hazard, the driveway through the cemetery has potholes big enough to take out a vehicle, and if you ever choose to go to a gravesite in the winter yeah better have a shovel. It would be nice if they at least did the walkways, nope this place is just rude. Every time I have had to talk to them they have been disrespectful in the office except the last manager about 1 1/2 years ago who was going to be more lenient. Also I learned to talk to the manager of workers sweeping the graves, this way he knew who I was and not to throw my stuff away. It helped for a while. Thank you Dale Clock for bringing attention to this. It is very difficult to deal with them when you are grieving a loss and I believe they have and continue to take advantage of that in the worst way. I was fortunate to have the Clock family help me through the most difficult time of my life. I didn’t have to deal with sunrise too much, at that most difficult time.
I, also, have issues with SUNRISE MEMORIAL GARDEN — My parents are buried there and they ran over the marker & one side of it is sunken. They said they would take care of it, years ago,but it still has not been taken care of!!!!! We have many loved ones buried there and all the lots are not being taken care of properly!!!!! We are very upset & embarrassed about how the Sunrise Cemetary is being taken care of!!!!
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My grandfather paid for both his plot when he paid for my grandmothers. He passed almost twenty years after my grandmother and when we contacted them to handle the prepaid cremation, they couldn’t find the paperwork. They told my uncle that because we couldn’t locate the paperwork and they switched owners, he’d have to pay again. Needless to say, my uncle did pay again and we were able to locate the paperwork showing the services were prepaid but could not get a refund and it was too much of an ordeal to fight it. But when your loved ones die, the last thing you want to do is hunt for paperwork you know exists. It’s cruel. We recently lost my husbands mother and Clock’s staff was the absolute best. Very caring and kind in such a difficult time. Thank you!
As I stated on Facebook, they buried my father in the wrong plot! This came to sunrises attention when a lady, who’s husband was very ill came into the office at Sunrise to make sure everything was in order for her husbands burial. Sunrise checked her husbands records and found they buried my dad in her husbands plot. So the had to open the grave, put my dad in a different plot!
When my husbands father died, they wanted to charge us for services that were previously paid for! They were very insistent that we had to pay this, until his 6’7″ – 240 pound son insisted we absolutely were not! 😳 This place is a sham!
My family was the one regarding the vault problem. Thank you so much for taking care of the problem for my father since we already had enough on our plates dealing with the death of my mother. Thanks again for everything
First of all, this was interesting to see this on FB. Glad I did! My husband’s parents have plots there, at Sunrise Memorial Gardens. Purchased 3-4 decades ago with a marker. When his father passed in 2012…we knew there were plots but never knew a marker was already there. (Mom had dementia) Complete surprise! Found this out after we were already looking at all possible markers to purchase…A lot of time wasted for sure. Here’s the best part..Our “representative” and I won’t say his name, matter-of-factly states to us that we owe $250.00 for the “end date” to be put on the marker. I questioned him and asked now do you mean the 1″x4″ piece of metal that has the year of death on it aka 2012 and he says “yes”. Now mind you, I pd. $275.00 20 yrs. ago for a granite headstone that was 12×20 for a babies grave…and this guy is telling me almost the same price for thin, metal piece with four numbers on it? When I started questioning him more and saying “I think not”, I will shop around for better prices, he looked like he wanted to crawl under a rock. He KNEW it was a bunch of bologna, but thank God I am Dutch and I wasn’t gonna cave for this ridiculous sales pitch. Shame on them! I went over to Superior Monument and they looked in their file and had 2012 plates still available and gave me one for no charge! How gracious! The opening of the grave was over $1200. Double the price at Oakwood. The marker had even sunk unevenly down into the ground to the point that the slab it’s attached to has broken in two. After repeated calls to add dirt and level this out…they did a poor attempt. Wished we never had to deal with them. Poor service. Thank you, Dale Clock for bringing this to light.
My parents are buried at Chapel Hill Memorial Cemetery in Grand Rapids, which is also a StoneMor location and the staff there is horrible. When my mom died in 2012 we went from the funeral home to Chapel Hill to make those arrangements and were met by a man in stained clothes who reeked of cigarette smoke and a woman that looked like she had just rolled out of bed (in the middle of the afternoon!). The only thing they cared about was getting paid and getting referrals. After the burial, they wanted us to make an appointment for the following day to “go over the paperwork.” I live in Muskegon, one of my brothers was leaving that afternoon headed back to Texas, and my other brother was leaving that evening for South Carolina. We tried to explain this to the people at Chapel Hill, asked if we could go over this paperwork immediately, while we were all together and were told no…we had to come back the next day…which none of us did. They called me every day wanting to know when we could come in and I finally had to tell them to stop harassing me and my family, we had tried to make arrangements for the “paperwork,” and I was finally asked when they could expect our referral lists. THAT was the important paperwork they wanted to go over. Until they clean up their act, I would never recommend Chapel Hill or any StoneMor location.
So I went an visited Sunrise again today (Finish up some paper work) an it still didn’t look like they had clean, vacuumed since i was there on the 10th an 11th. I drove around an I found some plots didn’t even have enough dirt in them. I snapped a few pictures.. I also checked up on my first husbands stone marker an the concrete around it is broke (From them driving over it) so i called superior to get it fixed. I also asked superior for their expert opinion because his marker is all beat up an scratched from their blades or tires.. we pay a lot of money for these markers an I think it should be their responsibility to polish them up when they are responsible for wrecking them. I again took pictures an I wish there was a way to share for all to see..
I like how people post on here, it’s always complaing, you never here the good stories that come from that cemetery and how many families are happy with everything. Thats all I got to say!!!
Well RayJay for one thing, learn how to spell, it is spelled hear not here.You must be blind as a bat and willing to put up with crap!
Wow Marilyn, not only are you trash talking a really old post, but your wrong.
The word HERE is a adverb and the definition is ….
in, at, or to this place or position.
An example since you seem to need it is
“they have lived here most of their lives.”
However the word “HEAR” is a verb and the definition is…..
perceive with the ear the sound made by (someone or something).
Im not a fan of cemetery or funeral home sales people, but I have seen funeral home sales people get angry when a family purchases the vault and casket for less whether from a cemetery or local casket provider.
My wife works for a Stole Mor cemetery- Assistant manager will tell families that my wife has spent weeks- if not months working with that she’s not in and will sell them behind her back. He’ll flat out lie to her. He also doesn’t think families of veterans should be aware that their loved one may qualify for a government bronze.
I also worked for a cemetery in northern Ohio- but it was ethical, gave every client a written 3 day cancellation notice that they could bring in to the park if they wanted to cancel. We also made sure that all veterans were aware that they qualified for a free government marker if they wanted it- but Stole Mor doesn’t operate this way! They should be ashamed that they have someone with such a pathetic sense of ethics working for them as an assistant manager!
I’m happy that there are families who are happy with their Stone Mor cemetery, and my wife does her best to take care of families even with the pathetic management- and upper management kooks that she has to deal with.
Don’t give your hard earned money to any cemetery that feels unethical to you in any way. Check the condition of it- ask other people about their experiences. Management like this should be forced out of business!
My wife and I also had a very unprofessional and negative experience with Sunrise management in arranging for the burial of my mother in law. All they were concerned about was money. I have absolutely nothing good to say about them.
This is the worst job I’ve ever had, by far. Please read this posting in its entirety. I left a full time sales job where I had worked nearly four years and was making in the $35 range annually as an assistant manager. I made it crystal clear to the sales manager who was interviewing me that I had to make at least that same amount in order for this job to work for me. She assured me that would be no problem. That was a complete lie, as I was very soon to find during my first week when an employee who had been there two years said that she lived off of minimum wage her entire first year. There was no going back at this point, so I tried to make the best of it. It soon became evident, however, that it is just another one of those commission based door-to-door cold-calling gigs disguised as a high paying sales job. The products this company sells are not only expensive, but very difficult to sell. And the desks and chairs for the salespeople are very old and in a rugged condition. The decision to leave my current job for this put me in an all around bad situation with nothing I could do. My wife and I had just moved to the area with a baby, and needed a decent income in order to make it.
During the interview, they talk and talk about all the leads you will be able to get on your own and the ones you are provided by the company, and make you think you’ll simply be the middle-man in helping all the customers who come in make their purchase. They talk about their “system with a proven track record,” and the tropical vacations you can win for good sales (and there will always be someone they know who recently won, which they’ll never forget to mention). Then the reality checks come in. The self generated leads are get out your phone book or cell phone and call every family member and friend you possibly can think of to set up an appointment to buy their burial arrangement service products, which again, is expensive and extremely difficult to sell. Your family members or friends might meet with you, simply because they’re your family and friends, but when it comes to getting out their checkbook, you might be lucky enough to make one sale. I was then given a list of thousands of residents in the area and told to call down the list. When I thought I had bad luck with my family and friends, that was far worse. You’ll be lucky to talk to someone over the phone longer than nine seconds, let alone make an appointment, let alone sell something expensive and hard to sell. Also note that this day in age, every single person has caller ID, and people will immediately recognize and ignore all incoming company phone calls. Who is going to pick up the phone when a strange unknown company you’ve never heard of is calling? And the corporate leads are simply generated by a call center who has people calling every customer who has products with the company, tricks them by telling them they’re scheduling a “paperwork updating” appointment, so that a “family service counselor” who is really just a salesman, can go to their house and sell additional products to them. Half the time, the person’s file is complete, and they don’t need anything else, and the other half the time, you drive to someone’s house and they’re not there, or they meet you at the door with a pen ready to sign the paperwork update. The price of each piece of a complete burial package ranges anywhere from the upper hundreds to the thousands of dollars levels. People are barely ever ready to finance this dollar amount from any lead whether personal or corporate. And if you get lucky and a corporate lead does purchase, you only make 5% commission, which equates to very little. You’ll find yourself basically wasting your time trying to get the ball rolling. Of all types of sales I’ve been in, this is the most ineffective marketing plan I’ve ever seen, which makes it extremely difficult starting out. Burial arrangement decisions are something a person needs to think about and decide themselves on their own terms, not to make a quick decision over with a commission hungry sales person in front of you.
And the pay structure – you make whichever is higher- your weekly commission amount or minimum wage on a weekly basis, benefits them, not you. It often takes several sales to even reach the minimum wage mark. So you’ll find yourself often making the same weekly income whether you sell nothing or make a few sales. That makes it even more difficult to get paid anything more than minimum wage the entire first year. The only real way around that is attempting to schedule all of your appointments in the same week, and then having a week of no appointments. That way, at least you have a chance at decent pay for a week, and then a week of minimum wage, instead of two weeks of minimum wage for selling the same amount. Don’t ever actually get your hopes up about winning a trip to a tropical island working for StoneMor.
The location I worked at, Mount Airy, North Carolina, was more than a year late in construction of a mausoleum, which they had sold spaces to. If someone were to have died who had a space there, they would have had to put the person in a different space, then move the corpse to the mausoleum once it was complete. There was no excuse for being that late on a construction project that they had been selling property to. This caused a ton of unhappy customers who were lied to and seemingly purchased property for nothing. That actually made me feel a little better, in a way, that I was not the only person this company had lied to.
I was advised by everyone at this location to make sure to lock the door inside the building to the room another sales associate and I shared. When I raised my eyebrows and asked asked why would I need to lock a door that is already inside of a locked building, I was told there was a part time employee who would come into the building sometimes and that he was suspected of going through people’s desks and stealing sales leads when there was no one around. I just laughed when I heard that as I added that to the list of “what have I gotten myself into.” That basically summed up the type of people associated with this company though, from the bottom, to the middle, to the top.
Two weeks ago, StoneMor settled a multi million dollar lawsuit filed by an attorney firm in Ohio to compensate the 500+ current and former employees who opted in, for lost wages and commissions the company has managed to not pay its employees over years time. The majority of which is from the company requiring employees to fill out weekly hand written time sheets for 40 hours, when the employee clearly worked overtime. StoneMor knew they were doing this the entire time, and so did the employees. The whole situation was just waiting for a whistleblower to make a phone call. I knew what it was for the second I opened the letter and saw StoneMor in the first sentence. Maybe now they’ll upgrade to an actual clock-in/out system on an actual computer like every single other workplace uses nowadays instead of the 1990s handwritten paper method, a convenient tool to hide overtime hours.
After two months of employment, I showed up to work one day and was told that I was dismissed and to go home due to low sales performance. The first two weeks I was there I was in training, so I was only selling for about six weeks. I was given no warning or extra training whatsoever before the phone call came in to let me go. Every other sales job I’ve had, where I’ve performed perfectly fine in every one, I’ve observed co-workers who struggled at times. Every other company has provided extra training for these people and helped them get their numbers up, especially if it was a newer employee in the situation. Occasionally, I’ve seen employees let go, but never after the company gave warnings and made genuine efforts to keep them. Add to that, I was selling during the last two weeks of June and the entire month of July. July has always historically been the slowest month of the year for this industry. People are budgeting for vacations over the summer, and they are especially not thinking about their burial arrangement needs. They did not even consider that in the least when they abruptly made the decision that I was done.
So there I was, jobless, with a family to support, and my last company where I worked prior was fully staffed. I was forced to claim unemployment for a period of time and take another lower paying job I was under qualified for before I was able to eventually get back into a decent job where I am now.
To be fair, if you can slim your way by with a very low income for awhile, you can eventually make good money with this company. After more and more funerals go through your location, you’ll eventually have more and more people to call back and ask the question “Don’t you want to be buried as close to your mother and father as possible? Great! Well we have that space I showed you still available near your parents’ plot, and the price is still this, don’t you want to secure that property in your name at that price before somebody else may take it or the price increases? Great!” …and you’ll find yourself able to get people in and write business. So if that’s your thing, then StoneMor might actually be the place for you. But make sure you are prepared for the fact that you will make very little for the first several months or longer, and this company will give you no warning and offer no training before a dismissal. So expect the same income level as a fast food cashier for months, or likely more than a year, and be on guard with every single thing going on around you at all times to make sure you are not being cheated out of anything if you do decide to work for this company. Not a single person can try to dispute this company is run by people who have a history of squandering their employees’ hard earned wages. They’ve done it before, they’ll do it again. If there’s a will, there’s a way. I don’t know if the fact that they’re having to shell out several million dollars over hundreds of people will make them rethink aspects their business practices or not, but even if it does, you’ll still find yourself making your phone calls sitting in an old beat up 20 year old desk and chair. It won’t be until a lawsuit is filed from injuries due to chairs and desks collapsing before they decide it might be time for an upgrade in that department. Now, to be fair, the room they take customers to when they come in is decent. So hopefully at least a few times a week you’ll get to sit at a nice table and chair in an OK furnished room.
In sum, this burial arrangement services corporation operates exactly like an insurance company, in that they staff themselves with sales people who sit behind desks everyday with “sell sell sell” on their mind as their sales manager is on conference calls being told “get your numbers up.” From the sales managers to salespeople to the people who make the executive decisions, this company has demonstrated an overwhelming lack of care for its employees and customers to a level I’ve never seen. Nothing I have said in this posting is incorrect or exaggerated in any way.
My goal by this posting is to educate any person of what they are getting themselves into before they buy into the “jump on board with us and make a bunch of money” pitch they will throw at you.
If you decide to do business with StoneMor as a customer, it’s decent products at standard prices. Just know you will get sales people from both your local and corporate call center calling you for the rest if your life (literally) to come in and purchase until your file is complete. If that’s what you want, then do business with StoneMor. To be fair, from what I observed, they are respectful of their do not call list. So just ask to be put on that list when you get your first phone call. And again, to be fair, the “quit playing on your phone” corporate atmosphere is good about ensuring the grass is always mowed and the headstone flowers are usually well maintained, which is something some of the non-corporately run cemeteries are not always good about.
I’m Nick Henne. Thanks for listening.
Contact me at n _henne@yahoo.com
This post is a few months old, but I wanted to reply because I am also a former Stonemor employee (at a different location) and I can verify that everything Nick said is correct. It really is like working at an insurance company. I worked there for six months and I think the most I ever made over minimum wage was $100 extra one week when I made my biggest sale of my entire time there. I was given no extra assistance or training, no help with leads (literally lists of local residents or the phone book is all I had), not even a computer. I looked people up on my smartphone to try and find current phone numbers. All of the files are entirely on paper. I never had a steady schedule (which was something I was promised when I was hired) and I ended up working several evenings a week, plus every Saturday and at least one Sunday a month. It made childcare really difficult.
If I had been given the option to have a flat salary and just stay in the office, handle appointments and paperwork for walk-ins or incoming calls, and handle the funerals, I would have taken it in a heartbeat and probably would have loved my job. I really did enjoy helping people through a rough time and making things easier on them. I just couldn’t afford to keep making minimum wage on top of the constant pressure and the utter lack of corporate or management support.
I buried my wife Oaklawn Memorial Gardens in Winston Salem NC, (Owned by Stonemor). I have spent $23,800.00 for an ‘Hedge Estate ” they call it, they did not tell me that is was an area big enough for 4 when bought it. Two plots are covered in bushes, when I asked about taking the bushes up, I was told I need to pay the rights $5500.00 for these two plots, and the bushes has to stay, if I buried anyone in those two the bushes would be put back on top of the grave site!!! I also purchased an angel bench (first told $13,000.00) when I found it else where for $5400.00 I went to speak with manager of Oaklawn and told them what crooks they are, and if he wanted $8700.00 for bench and rights to set it I would take it , of course he took the money..
There are so many graves sites that are covered in dead grass, sunken in areas, headstone sunk, headstones pushed out of ground by roots. They will not fix anything unless someone complains I assume.
The only honest person here is Lisa the office lady.
These people are dishonest, untrustworthy and should go to hell to burn.
Their are so many people in the area I live in who say they too have had terrible experience with these people.
Richard C.
As a former Manager for the StoneMor company for five years,I have read all the above Replys and I don’t agree that these people are dishonest or untrustworthy!! I was let go after five years of hard work as one of their managers. however I don’t blame them for what they needed to do. but as far as the top five people that run this company” I would give them my shirt off my back. and they all would do the same for a family. get on with your life and stop blaming this company. Mr Greg Strom, and Mr Larry Miller, are the best people that you could ever work for!! by the way I’am not a person speaking out with only five years in the industry, I have worked in the Industry for 28 years!! and I know these fine people that run this company for over 20 years. please give it a brake and before any person puts down this company or these fine people that run it, please ask yourself did you do everything you needed to when you worked there. Kevin Williams
Perhaps when your family has deceased and their casket is sitting on the ground due the company not providing the correct machinery to display a $6000.00 casket, your feelings may change. As for the management at the top, I cant speak on their morals, but if they are good as you say, perhaps instead of looking at their financial statements daily, they should visit the locations they own., I have pictures of so many grave sites that are either broken where the heavy machinery has run over them and broke them, or the lawn mower blade has caught the edge and broke it. Dead sod, that unless a family member complains they aren’t going to spend a dime to fix it.
Perhaps a direct mailing with all these pictures sent to 8.726 homes in a certain zip code would get someone’s attention?
Sounds like the funeral home that messed you over on a over priced $6,000 casket should have provided the “correct machinery”. Now I will agree that Stonemor upper management, Admin, and grounds keepers doesn’t care about their families or how the cemetery looks. Also it sounds like there is a lot more to your story than your sharing. Perhaps Dishonesty and being untrustworthy is not just a Stonemor problem Richard C. …
Your are full of crap. I worked for stonemor for 6 years. A bunch of thieves . only worried about stockholders and Miller’s 500 thousand dollar bonus meanwhile the office and maintenance get a few dollars . yeah single digit bonus. Taking everything they can with constructive delivery out of the trust funds leaving the Cemetery left with less for the future . the existing cemeteries are falling apart and never get repaired unless the newspapers or lawyers get involved but they keep buying more. He high pressure sales tactics.
I am a current employee of Stonemor and I can guarantee everything in this article is 100% true !! They are nothing but liars thieves and want you to prey on the emotions of someone who just lost a loved one !! That’s the interior motto “prey on emotions” ! And ” create the urgency like they’re going to die tomorrow”. Upper management does not care about anything except the bottom line the dollars how many appointments you can get a day with whoever , and how many cells were made to meet the quota for the month for your park . The little park I’m at has a budget of $80,000 a month for two sales counselors to sell that much. We are hounded daily by upper management to Sal Sal Sal and to be running appointments all over gods green earth and they do not pay for mileage . As sales counselors we make minimum-wage of $7.25 an hour . Please stay away from any property owned by Stonemor Partners LP . They will screw you any chance they get and yes I’ve had that double sell vaults and cover mistakes . They are not only on ethical they are disgusting .
Dear Kevin Williams,
(And to anybody reading, this is Skyline Memory Gardens, a cemetery that’s been there since the 1950s located in Mount Airy, North Carolina which was sadly bought up StoneMor)
You state that you do not think StoneMor is run by people who are dishonest or untrustworthy? For 2,000 words as to why StoneMor is indeed run by people who are completely dishonest and untrustworthy, scroll up three posts, and for more than 2,000 words as to why StoneMor is the most pathetic company on the planet in addition to being run by people who are dishonest and untrustworthy, scroll down…
StoneMor was sued within the last year for $2.3 million over employees for ripping them off with their pay for years. You think these fine people you named off were sitting back in their chairs everyday not knowing that was going on? I can’t speak accurately on any of that, because I have no idea, but I doubt it. They knew their employees were working full 40 hour weeks Monday-Friday, then forced to work weekends, then forced to fill out time sheets that never exceeded 40 hours. They knew all too well that attempting to steal overtime hours from their employees by telling them not to clock in on a computer, like every single other established company uses this day in age, would create a problem. That is why they use hand written time sheets. Sweeping overtime hours under the rug without problems arising is much easier using hand written time sheets employees fill out each week. “Only put 40 hours” StoneMor sales managers call out every week as the time sheets are passed out. And employees, of course, do what they’re told by their bosses, even when it’s illegal, like in this case. And in addition to that small fact…
StoneMor offers a high turnover, minimum wage paying, door-to-door knocking little sales gig that any experienced sales professional like myself knows to stay away from completely. The application and interview process is specifically designed to make a person think they have an actual good opportunity in front of them, when in fact, the opportunity is the exact opposite. StoneMor does everything they can to attract successful, experienced sales people who are looking for a step up in their career and they make them think their company will be a step up. They don’t dare tell anyone about the income they will make for the first few years, which is less than the average McDonald’s employee income. They tell everyone they will be provided with company set sales appointments, but they don’t dare tell anyone the corporate set appointments are a worthless waste of time, which they are. They gloat about how excellent their benefits are and how someone they know won a company paid vacation recently. The benefits are actually nothing special at all, and the chances of ever winning a vacation is extremely low. They don’t tell you about their extremely pushy sales tactics that they push on the elderly, which are completely over the line pushy. And they also especially do not let you know that you will be working under a special “at-will” contract, which allows employers the right to terminate any person at any time for any reason they want to. And StoneMor is a company that fires employees on a whim with zero warnings whatsoever. My first day at StoneMor, after accepting the job and quitting my last job, the first thing I did when I walked in the door was sit down as I read over this “at-will” contract, rolled my eyes and signed it, under the direction of the sales manager, who didn’t mention a thing to me about that in the interview. That is information that should have been provided before in the interviewing process. And also, during the interview they have you sit in the room they take customers into during sales presentations. This room has nice and comfortable tables, chairs, computers, etc. They don’t show you the room you’ll be working in, in which there are old, dented, scratched, beat up desks and chairs that are completely uncomfortable, and no computers. ALL of your work is done on paper, the way American work places used to operate in the 1980s. I am not making any of this up. They knowingly, and deliberately do everything they can to hide what this job really is to basically sucker qualified and experienced professionals who wouldn’t even think about applying if they knew the truth. And what did I just read recently in over a dozen recent employee reviews? StoneMor now requires all employees to take furloughs, which are unpaid periods off. I guess they must have gotten a disgruntled at the fact that they are no longer able to steal overtime hours from employees the way they used to in the good old days, so they need a way to make up for it that is actually legal this time. So furloughs? That’s a new term on me. I’ve never seen any company require anything like that in my life and I doubt I ever will again. That’s the convenient legal way to steal from employees that won’t get you sued for millions of dollars.
Now, you said read all the above replies? You read my above reply? My above reply is three up from your above reply. You ask me did I do everything I needed to when I worked there? Let’s see… I called everybody within my extended network of family and friends who lived in the area every single day. Just about every single call was ignored. (I never answer when my caller ID shows a random company I’ve never heard of) A few people actually picked up and politely said “no thank you.” And then, from these phone calls, I actually met with a few people, showed them products, options, and prices, and they said “no thank you.” Being the experienced salesperson that I am, I wasn’t surprised at all that no one wanted to drop thousands of dollars on something they didn’t want to even think about. Why am I here trying to convince them to make these arrangements and decisions in such a time pressed manner? I was then given a list of thousands of residents in the area and instructed to call down the list. That was even more of a waste of time. I won’t get into details. I was then told to go out door knocking. Again, I won’t even get into what a waste of that time that was. Mind you that I have been in sales for years. I’ve performed perfectly fine in each different type of sales I’ve been in. I’ve sold under this type of marketing before, and speaking from experience, this type of marketing works when you are selling an item that is inexpensive, easy to sell, and that everyone needs for their daily lives. Burial arrangement products are highly expensive, difficult to sell, not needed in daily lives, and are a product that people naturally want to block out of their minds. Any solicitor selling this product will be ignored, even if it’s a family or friend.
This sales manager who interviewed me for this job completely assured me that I’d have no problem making the same income I was currently making in my assistant management job where I had been working nearly four years. I was making over $600 weekly. That was a lie. She knew I’d be looking at minimum wage for at least a year, then a likely possible average of $10 per hour the next year, a huge jump down from the $16 per hour I was currently making. I got home everyday to my wife yelling at me about my income, and wondering what I was going to do with my mortgage and car payment that was due in a week. I’d be facing foreclosures and repossessions in a few months and my credit taking a plunge making $7.25 an hour. So basically, lies, lies and more lies is what this company feeds qualified sales people like myself to get them in the door after leaving their decent jobs. Then, if they don’t put numbers on the board immediately, they fire these employees on a whim with no warnings or training. That’s exactly what they did with me after less than two months, and performing every required job function every single day. The best sales person on the planet would not have been able to make sales being face-to-face with the people I presented to. Every person I met with was convinced we were simply meeting for a required “paperwork updating” appointment and was in no way prepared to drop $1,000. They signed the paperwork (which is not even that important to even do) and then they rushed me out the door. I felt like the go-go guy driving around helping the StoneMor location get their completely unnecessary paperwork signed throughout my brief two months there, while making just a few sales along the way that didn’t even make me an extra penny in the process, so that they could tell me I was terminated after a short time period without any kind of warning or additional coaching. And I was selling in the month of July, the historically slowest month of the year in the industry when everybody is budgeting for vacations and NOT thinking about budgeting for their death beds. This type of sales is a joke, and it’s the complete opposite of what I was told it was. The pitch they throw at potential employees is designed to excite good, hard working, presently employed professionals, make them think they have a good opportunity in front of them, and throw them into a daily job with a company that they regret having anything to do with. I’m not an angry former employee who is embarrassed about being fired and is trying to get back at a company. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about with this. I was simply suckered into a scam and I am just spreading completely true information about a corrupt company because no person deserves to be treated the way this company will treat you. And yes, I used the word scam because everything about this operation is consistent with various modern scams. Preying on peoples’ emotions when they’re vulnerable with the intention of getting money out of them, preying on the elderly who don’t always know to make the best decisions, instilling fear of skyrocketing prices that their loved ones will be faced with in order to get a sale today, getting someone to buy one thing and the continuously nagging them to get numerous other things that go with the one thing, tricking people into taking time out of their day to “update paperwork” and then pushing sales on them, illegally stealing employees wages through not allowing employees to report overtime hours, (which got them sued $2.3 million), forcing every employee to take unpaid time off (furloughs, the legal way to do it so they won’t be sued), outright lying about the pay and perks of the job that are completely untrue in order to actually get good people to work for them, (only the desperate for work, unemployed, and unqualified people would work for them if any little bit of the truth was known about the job) and overall making just about everyone they sucker in as an employee or customer feel cheated, lied to, and regretting having anything to do with you. Every characteristic of this operation is a scam on the inside and is disguised as a legitimate business operation on the outside. When I was on the phone with the attorney’s office in regard to the stolen overtime hours lawsuit, I spoke with the lawyer about these numerous other issues. He told me it absolutely not legal to lie about income in interviews, especially at the extent they do. He said he thought that matter would have success if taken to court by enough people. It would be, however, a difficult case with the labor laws in place and the way they work. Whereas compared this to the stolen overtime hours lawsuit, the labor laws are so black and white, that a freshman law student could have won in court with that set of laws and circumstances.
The sales pitches are specifically designed to prey on people who are emotionally overwhelmed during the most devastating time of their life, and make people think they need to purchase now before the prices skyrocket. Many people have just seen their parents, or in some cases, their children being buried. That is the perfect time to show a person a nearby plot and throw the pitch “that space over there is open. And oh, you better get it fast before it sells, and also keep in mind, burial arrangement prices double every 10 years” … It’s sleazier than the Kevin’s used auto lot five miles up the road on the left that plays corny commercials on the radio all day. But that’s how people eventually make good money with this company after working there for 5+ years. They get more and more people to who are emotionally attached to that moment they spent with you, so that they can’t say no later on. So, good income is possible, after years and years goes by, if you are OK with being this type of a person every single day. I have no earthly idea as to why the prices for these services somehow doubles every decade, increasing at a soaring rate, much faster than inflation. By those numbers, burial arrangement services will catch up to the price tag of an average house in the next 50 years. So, to put that into context, a small slab of stone with your name on it sitting on just a couple square feet of land is somehow going to catch up to the cost of acres of land with a house sitting on it over the next five decades if what burial arrangement service people say is true. (Note that StoneMor is not the only burial arrangement company telling people that) But no matter who that’s coming from, that’s an awfully convenient scenario for a salesperson to present to someone to make them hurry up and get these prices next week. And the thing is, it actually works. That, among other reasons, is how the pathetic company has been able to successfully report growth, the way that actual good companies do.
If you walk into a StoneMor location, you will be greeted with a smile. You will likely be shown professionalism and good customer service. Whether you are seeking to purchase property for yourself, or if it’s for another family member who needs you to take care of a visit for them if you’re a power of attorney. You will likely leave an appointment feeling OK about working with them. That is the fake superficial shell on the outside that they reveal. After you leave, then comes out the dirty truth of the company and it’s people on the inside. They will go right to your paperwork, figure out any additional product you will need, and endlessly call you as they’re looking up on the sales board trying to get their numbers as high as they can. You will get phone calls from the local and corporate offices to come in for “paperwork updating” appointments. The goal of these calls and appointments is sales and nothing else. The calls won’t end. They’ll also ask for phone numbers of every family member you’ve ever had in the area who they hope will be dying to be buried next to you. That sales tactic, endlessly asking for family and friend referrals from clients, is exactly what insurance companies use, except it’s much easier with insurance, especially because everybody is required to have it nowadays. They have meetings in which they go over with each other who they’ve met with and how many referrals they got from that person, how many appointments they’ve set, and how many sales they’ve made. That is the constant mindset of each and every person working in these offices at all times. Don’t be fooled by the hugs they give you before you leave after funerals. They have sales numbers on their minds the entire time. They’ll meet in their little offices immediately after you leave gathering up all the paperwork and planning when and what sales pitch route to take before calling you to get more money out of you to meet their monthly sales goal.
It’s time to talk about the sales manager at my location, a multi-dimensional corrupt on every level human being, and a perfect fit for StoneMor. Where to begin… A customer, one day, showed me a defect on his mother’s headstone. No other headstone out there had this defect. He said he made numerous requests to have this small issue fixed. I got his name, told him I’d report the issue to the appropriate people and we would get it taken care of for him, which is the way any kind of normal business operation would function in this situation. I gave the sales manager the man’s name, and she only rolled her eyes and commented that this man was always complaining and she did not address the issue. But, there was clearly an issue, an issue that is covered in StoneMor’s perpetual care that they promise every customer in their sales pitch, an issue that needed to be fixed, and it obviously wasn’t. This same sales manager gave the 3rd party landscaping company employees who mowed the grass a hard time about coming in and taking restroom breaks as they spent hours in the hot sun. This same sales manager, and other employees there, made fun of the person who was employed before me who they fired and that I replaced. This person was supposedly having nightmares related to working in the death industry and did not work out for that reason. While this is something I would laugh about at the dinner table, supervisors are not allowed to openly discuss personnel matters like that with employees in the workplace, let alone laugh at and make fun of people who they let go, which is both unprofessional and flat out immature. This same sales manager, showed up to work one morning all whining that she got a speeding ticket, but according to her, she “wasn’t speeding.” I don’t know. I wasn’t there. But I’ve never heard of police lying about speeding. That’s not a hard quota to fulfill and they don’t need to make up instances like that. And all this I observed in the barely two months of my being there. Looking at the whole spectrum, it’s an obvious situation. It’s no surprise to me at all that this person had no problem in completely misleading me about the job and flat out lying about the income. All I’ll say is StoneMor looks for certain human traits when choosing the type of people to manage their business locations, and no morally or ethically sound person who knows the difference between right vs. wrong would ever make a good fit for that job. They would not be able to follow and abide by StoneMor’s policies for a week.
Might this job be OK for some certain people? If you are in your midlife crisis, and haven’t been able to find work that you’re proud to do or pays well, StoneMor could an OK opportunity, if you’re married to someone who makes good money and you really seriously can afford to live off of a fast-food cashier’s income for a few years. You can also tell people at Christmas cocktail parties or your 20 year high school class reunion that your job title is a “Family Service Counselor,” and talk about how your job is helping families, and you might be able to even convince a few people that you do important work, and you might find yourself driving home with a self-esteem level increased by two points. Then you’ll drive back to work the next day as just another sales person performing outright simple work. So, this job has it’s place, for some certain people.
Every word I’ve said is true. To any current StoneMor employee reading these review boards, you probably know exactly what myself and others are talking about. To any current employee reading what I’m writing and thinking I need to go get a life and move on, all I am doing is spreading information about your company that is true. Somebody needs to do that, considering how all your pathetic company knows how to do is lie to people, which in turn, screws them over and makes them regret ever having anything to do with you. If I can steer even one person away from becoming involved with StoneMor in any way by posting this information, then I have made the world a better place. I would have “helped” that person, like StoneMor employees claim they do, except I would have actually helped them. And by the way, I have moved on. I’m sitting behind a computer, in a comfortable chair, with 200 company-provided warm sales leads, making appointments and sales every single week, and making over $50,000 per year. The company I am with has also talked to me about moving up, and my numbers are where they need to be to do so. So basically, everything StoneMor said it was, but wasn’t, is where I’m working now. My only intention of revealing that information is to let every person know there are far better opportunities out there than StoneMor’s pathetic little sales gig.
My name is Nick Henne. My personal cell phone number is 704-301-8976. I would be more than happy to talk to anyone about any of the information I have presented. If I do not answer, just leave me a voicemail and I will call you back at my earliest convenience. Thanks for listening, again 🙂
Finally, I’ve read a post that I agree with! I am a former Sales Director of this company. You cannot ask for better Upper Leadership than what this company has. It’s a select few bad apples that are in local/area positions that are giving this company a bad name. I disagree with the majority of what nickhenn has said. Stonemor has excellent training for their employees. It may very well be that he had the misfortune of not being trained the proper way by his supervisor or it appears from what I’ve read this job wasn’t cut out for you. It takes a very special and unique person to do this job and serve the families the way in which they are to be informed and educated on the importance of taking care of their death while they can freeze the price of inflation so that their family doesn’t have to come up with all of that money at once. Nickhenn, you are so very wrong in saying that insurance will cover this cost! And by the way, the bonus structure is the best of any I’ve seen. I have been in this industry since 1993. I love this company. I love the guys that formed it. Good guys.
Wait until it is your family member that you have to deal with the likes of 98% of this company , specifically speaking of Oaklawn gardens in Winston Salem Nc.
” They will have to be judged One day, and face up to the lies and dishonesty they used on people to earn their living.
So you think it’s ok to sell a vault and an opening and closing, take a loan to deposit into the trust fund and then preinstall the vault a month later and then withdrawal the money from the trust and use to buy more cemeteries?.Give no bonuses to your office and maintenance and furlough your employees again for 2 weeks in 2016?. Let there mausoleums fall apart , maintenance buildings fall apart and offices in dire need of upgrading? A real good ethical company.
LynneS,
I never said anywhere in my posting that insurance covers the cost of burial arrangement products. You misunderstood what I said.
You said there are bad apple managers that give StoneMor a bad name, and that may have been what I experienced. I completely agree with you on that. The managerial skills of the manager at my location were the worst I have ever seen. When I filed my taxes that year I worked there, the CPA doing it for me told me that she was no longer the manager there. I can’t speak accurately on that. To all I know, this person had received this information fifth hand, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
You said I may not have been cut out for the sales job. I’ve performed perfectly fine in numerous other sales jobs, and this job was nothing extremely different. I informed every person sitting in front if me the products needed, the costs and options of financing, the importance of securing the current prices to avoid increased prices on the future. There’s nothing highly skilled about it. People’s annoyance of being met with numerous times for these “paperwork updating” appointments where nothing’s changed is why these little meetings are pointless and is why I was rushed out the door.
The average first year income for a StoneMor employee is barely more than minimum wage. I left a job that I was excellent at and had been there four years because the sales manager lied to me in the interview leading me to actually think that this would be a pay increase and a step up in my career. That is the biggest lie I was ever told and that almost caused me a repossession on my car and a foreclosure on my house.
You said StoneMor actually has good training? All I know from my experience is that it is the worst training I’ve ever seen. I’ve not seen every manager’s training. If good training exists somewhere in the company, it was not where I was.
StoneMor employs an army of commissioned sales people who only think about sales numbers and they take advantage of people who are not thinking clearly. References of heaven are often used in the process, which increases sales numbers. The company has a history of not taking care of customers after sales are made, and employees have a history of not being satisfied with the way they have been treated.
Stockholders are usually pretty happy though. They (usually) get their day off to a good start seeing StoneMor’s numbers with a green arrow pointing upward.
I worked for them for four years it was a nightmare every cemetery they own is a dump and disgrace. a bunch of illiterate upper management for sure
http://www.register-herald.com/news/families-outraged-over-condition-of-burial-plots/article_16eb0b86-1cec-5f99-b1aa-d63196fbb487.html
Sunrise has two of the nicest employees I’ve met. The manager Joe is a kind hearted young man raising a young family and doing his honest to goodness best with what this cemetery has to offer. No business is perfect but I am thankful for the employees I’ve met and the jobs they do. I’ll take one of StoneMors cemeteries over most of the overgrown messes I drive by with stones falling over and no staff at all to even help you. These are people just trying to make a living helping folks like me during a horrible time in my life. Bless Sunrise and the memories it holds. Memories of my loved ones.
We had problems with Sunrise 30 years ago when they tried to charge us for services we previously paid for, and again a few years ago when my father died and they buried him in someone’s else’s plot. He had to be dug up and moved! Very trying and emotional experience.
I was employed at stonemor an was let go on Nov 25 by Manger Robert Cooper which he lie on me as if I quite my job just to cover his ass im a singel mother with a son in collage which now I’m not going to be able to take care .Because he state I left my job and he had no idea why,,,,Now I have been denied my unemployment benefits due to his false statements..I was treated like we was in the 50 I was put an the back where the guys dig graves in which they call my offfice…my view was the volts the stack up .but all the other employees (white)had very nice wooden desk in the front my phone did not work i had no asset to much but I made my sales the best way I could I use my own money trying to promote an generate sale even tho I was determined to not allow this man not take away my pride. I am still going to fight for my right an also my employment..So no matter what this man has done to my lively hood I want him to know I forgive him an VicKY for what they done..Karma don’t take long…my God have mercy on this company for not giving me a chance to prove that I did not abandoned my job.
More “Classy” moves by this sorry excuse for a company that is supposed to be one of the best in what they do/offer.
http://wrbl.com/2017/02/27/first-on-three-woman-meets-with-management-in-phenix-city-over-cemetery-concerns/
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/news/article135224209.html
http://wrbl.com/2017/02/26/memories-removed-from-local-cemetery/
I’m here to join with everyone else. Unfortunately, we don’t seem to be heard as the problems continue. Our grievance is with Christian Memorial in Rochester, Michigan. Let me just say there is nothing “Christian” about them. One person tells one story and the next time you call there is another story. I am hitting every venue I can find to put out the word for people to stay away from there. When my grieving father (wife of 62 years recently passed) called to get information about selling his plots (he decided to bury her closer to home so he could visit more often), he got a major run-around. Yes, we’ll sell your plots, no we can’t sell your plots, yes we can help you, no we never said that. It’s horrible! I warn everyone to stay away from Christian Memorial and any other places that StoneMar owns.
Montlawn Memorial Park, Raleigh , NC another Stonemor Cemetery.
I traveled from out-of-town before Christmas to put flowers on family graves. I was shocked and dismayed to find that my parents niche in the columbarium had been moved to another location! I was not notified nor was any part of the legal process for grave removal followed. Adjacent graves had also been moved.
Yesterday, after many attempts to contact Montlawn staff I was finally able to speak with someone in middle management, responsible for cemeteries across the state. He was at first helpful and seemed as shocked and upset as me. He volunteered that it was illegal to move a grave without an extensive process and paperwork. Since I had already checked statutes I knew this, but appreciated him being forth coming with the information. He said he would call me back which he did within 30 minutes. However, when he called back his attitude had completely changed. He was, he said “confused”. He had spoken with staff on site and had them check in person. The graves he said were exactly where they were interred in 2000 and 2006 according to cemetery records. My response was that it was suspicious rather than confusing because the graves are in a different location.
I am not a dottering old fool as was implied who can’t remember the location of the graves, I have put flowers on the grave every Christmas since my parents died and prior to 2006 I visited the site with my mother several times a month.
I will be filing a complaint with the NC Cemetery Commission. If anyone who reads this has a similar experience with Stonemor or any information that might be useful please reply to this post. And if you have loved ones in the Garden of Love Columbarium at Montlawn Memorial Gardens in Raleigh, NC you might want to visit, they may also have been moved!