A local couple prepaid for their cemetery plots so they could be buried next to their loved ones, but when they visited the cemetery about a year later, they found someone else had been buried there.
Steve Kramer said he and his wife bought the plot right next to her parents at Mount Comfort Cemetery in Alexandria, Virginia, for $7,500 in 1999. They said when they saw someone buried there about a year later, they knew there was no way the cemetery could fit two more grave sites in such a small space so they asked the cemetery for a refund.
Maryland has an Office of Cemetery Oversight, Virginia has a cemetery board, and D.C.’s Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs takes complaints for every and any consumer problem.
“Each of them will readily admit that all they can do is get the consumer together with the business and try to have them come to some agreement,” Ditzler said. “That’s not really an acceptable course of action, but that’s the way the law exists.”
Kramer thought prepaying was a good idea.
“Take a lot of the pressure off the kids if something were to happen,” he said.
But Ditzler advises pre-planning, not prepaying.
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“Don’t prepay or buy items in advance,” he said. “Too often you move away or the owners of the business change, close their business or die.”
Dignity Memorial, which owns the cemetery, said it guards the privacy of families and does not discuss specific client matters with the media.
Information for helping plan a funeral and burial:
- Funeral Consumers Alliance: Your Funeral Rights
- National Funeral Directors Association: Your Rights as a Consumer
- FTC: Funeral Costs and Pricing Checklist
- Find a Local Funeral Consumers Alliance
- Maryland Office of Cemetery Oversight
- D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs
- Virginia Cemetery Board
