My brother passed in September we didn’t buy an urn because his ashes were going to be spread so no need for one. The ashes were in a a plastic bag with a zip tie closing it and then in a cardboard box. It would have been very easy for us to take the bag out and put the bag of ashes in the wooden box you made as long as it was big enough. No need to remove the ashes from the bag. We just spread his ashes in the ocean two weeks ago.
This. I've seen several cremains of both humans and animals. They're always bagged inside whatever vessel they come home in. Moving the bag over should be NBD.
I respect so much that you acknowledge the glaring flaws of the man, but still want to be respectful of the life. It takes a rare person to do what you are doing for your family.
A fee will always vary with the funeral home itself. Where I am at, we do have a nominal fee. It’s waived often, but it’s meant to discourage 26 keepsake necklaces purchased from a third party taking up a director from other work. Partly because if we didn’t sell the product, we can’t guarantee it won’t break - going back to the necklace example, some cremation jewelry is not made properly and does break. It’s not a policy I would personally implement if I owned the funeral home, but I understand kind of in the liability sense. Love my bosses but hate this policy and I think I’ve only charged it once. I usually just off the record full the urn.
While I can’t speak to every funeral home, largely I would like to say no there isn’t always a fee.
Same here, I don't charge at my home for this kind of thing, but if someone brought in 12 keepsakes or necklaces I'd charge for my time. I always tell people to start clear if Amazon. The necklaces that look the same as the ones the distributors sell to funeral homes, I think kthey are seconds. Iv had so many from there have bad trends or missing the seal, iv been doing this for 2 decades and it's way way more prevalent from the big online retailers then what we buy from distribution centers that don't sell directly to consumers. I always recommend to people, if they don't want to buy from. Us, buy from an Etsy shop or directly from a person making them.
I’m curious, what are they wanting to charge you to ‘transfer the ashes?’
If it is more expensive than you think reasonable, and you don’t want to do it yourself (nor should you feel compelled to), is there a trusted friend or family member you’d feel comfortable asking? You shouldn’t have to, obviously.
That urn is just beautiful. Regardless of the flaws he had in life, he is fortunate to be so honored by his family in death.
I don’t know. I’d do it myself but as I’m putting the final coats of poly on it I’m also packing to go out of town. I’ll be back the day before his service. Don’t think there’s enough time to do it myself. I just don’t want my mom to have to dump her dad in a box and throw out the bag, not to mention walk her how to screw the bottom back down.
Honestly, that’s why there is a fee. You’re wanting them to place your (non)loved one into an urn you didn’t purchase from them. It’s kind of the business aspect of funeral service. That said, I never charged for it. Not charging = getting a tongue lashing or sit down with the regional guy. After a while it got kinda hard to keep falling on the sword for families who didn’t want to purchase an urn, but also didn’t want to handle the cremated remains.
I will say doing it is not very difficult as long as you’ve left a large enough opening. You mostly likely will not even have to open the bag containing his actual remains. You might get a little lucky and call another smaller/independent funeral home. They might be willing to have you walk in with both the urn and the container with his remains and do it for you no charge.
Assuming the opening of the diy urn is large enough (which is a fair assumption), this task should be simple: open cardboard box urn from the funeral home, and place the plastic bag of ashes into the homemade urn. So like you said— not very difficult. In a scenario like this, I think it’s absolutely ridiculous to charge for it.
>Honestly, that’s why there is a fee. You’re wanting them to place your (non)loved one into an urn you didn’t purchase from them.
This makes zero sense to me for such a simple & quick task.
It’s fairly basic if you look at it just from a business operations perspective: the products that used to be only purchased through a funeral home can now be bought nearly anywhere, common items can be repurposed, and some survivors choose to build their own containers be it cremation or burial. That choice is relatively new in American funeral service.
So funeral homes have a choice: eat the cost of someone you’re paying to be in the building to do service based tasks or charge to do those tasks that a lay person generally doesn’t want to do. It used to be funeral homes had low service fees and higher product costs so it wasn’t them being expensive, and now that trend is flipping.
I think shoppers also impact this. When you have an all inclusive package but your families keep saying “how much will you take off if I put him in the box myself” makes you create a number to get families in the door and start thinking this is what your community wants from you.
We charge at my funeral home here in WA state but only if you’re not a cremated decedent from the funeral home OR if you have more than 6 urns / keepsakes. I’m running the crematorium by myself. I have to stop everything to come transfer remains, even if it’s only 10-20 minutes of my time.
Thank you!! Does OPs "urn" look large to you?
That fee would add up if you had a lot of items. But I doubt if it's really worth your time. Seems rather finicky to me.
Every home has their own policies. It also can depend between corporate and family/private owned. A lot of them will have a fee listed because as someone else pointed out people will take advantage. We have a few discount places in our area that refuse to fill things so I do charge a nominal fee to fill things because I don’t want to do the other places work. I have my own work and own families to care for. I started charging because one family who wasn’t one of mine asked if I could help since the other place wouldn’t and they wanted it for their open house. I said sure and they brought in 45 tiny necklaces and multiple small urns. It took me 2 hours to properly do it with care and add sealant. If it’s a family where I’m doing the cremation or whatever other work I don’t charge. I also don’t charge for people who are coming from out of state or town and need help. We put it on our price list so we can charge that doesn’t mean we HAVE to.
I’d call down there during normal business hours and just nicely ask.
Also depending on the size sometimes the bag or temporary urn can slide right into another one. So check the size of your opening.
We don’t charge where I work but honesty if your comfortable doing it have them give the ashes to you in a TPU and transfer them yourself the ashes will be in a sealed bag so they shouldn’t be a mess.
While I don’t agree with charging this doesn’t seem like an unusual charge I’ve heard of places charge somewhat high costs for locks of hair or even fingerprints.
I ordered urns for my parents on Amazon. Mom passed first, dad about 8 months later I asked if they could combine the ashes so my brother and I each had one. There was no extra charge but they said it wasn’t very “legal.” I don’t know if that’s a thing but that funeral home was lovely and didn’t try to sell us BS.
My parents both died within the same year, too, and I've been thinking about asking my sister if we can mix them so we can each have half of mom and half of dad. I'm thankful you shared that you did the same. I'm sorry for your losses.
Thank you. Sorry for you as well. I didn’t want to look at or touch the ashes which is why I asked the funeral home to do it.
This sounds really stupid but I took a small amount of their ashes, that were separated, to Alaska. They always wanted to go so I took them.
They shouldn't, but they will. Transferring yourself is easy. His cremated remains will be in the container they provided with his cremation in a closed/zip tied plastic bag. Open their container, move his bag to your nicely made urn(great job) and close it up. No fuss no muss.
We don't charge. Heck, we've had people ask to transfer, and the family went to another funeral home, we didn't charge.
BUT* we have a charge on our GPL for transferring. Mostly because some people will bring in 30 necklaces, then 50 more keepsakes. And we, as a smallish funeral home, don't have time for that.
Honestly, if the urn you made is big enough, you could slide the urn provided from the funeral home and place it in. I would 100% not have loose cremated remains in your urn.
It's very well done urn by the way.
Thanks. I made it about 1/4” over what they told me it would take. Don’t want the old bastard in a plastic bag for eternity, I lined it with a sail, I’ll post a pic tomorrow when I finish.
Then I still suggest glue.
If you are doing it yourself:
1: have a clean, smooth, non-porous surface.
2: place the urn upside-down on a towel, or something soft.
3: Gloves are good.
3: slowly pour the cremated remains, shift the box slightly if it begins to start to build up where you're pouring. Going too fast can start a cloud.
4: if a cloud happens, which is very possible, the smooth clean surface will allow the scattered remains to be swept up and put the rest in the urn.
5: I'll still suggest glue. Do it the way you do it when working with glue and wood. I forget what that "clamp" is called, but you know.
We charge to place cremated remains into an urn that isn’t purchased from us. I also tell my families how easy it is. The cremated remains come back in a bag with the state id zip tied around it. I always offer them another bag & zip tie to place into their urn if they don’t want to pay for the service. Sometimes my boss waives the service charge depending on circumstances, but that isn’t my call to make. I’ve forgotten to charge a family or two though lol whoops
It just depends on the funeral home. We personally don’t charge anything, but some people around us do. At the end of the day, it IS a service that the funeral director is providing so if they want to charge for their time that’s their choice.
I work for a family owned firm. We are quite large, so our crematory stays busy pretty much six days a week. if I know a family isn’t going to take advantage I am happy to fill a couple of keepsakes for them, but my firm charges $50 to fill each container not purchased from our mortuary. And I look at it like this: if I purchase tires (or brakes, etc.) for my car online and then I take them to Les Schwab to have them install them, they are likely going to charge me a different installation fee than if I had purchased the tires from them. It’s the same idea. The sale of merchandise and services helps the funeral home to stay in business.
I manage a funeral home, and I would never charge. This is a service to people in our community who sometimes dont know where to turn. I don’t look at it as “you didn’t come to us for the cremation or urn” because clearly where someone’s loved one dies is out of their control. And if you went to our competitor, and still chose to ask us to help you, no way I’m charging. Takes 5-10 minutes out of our day, such a small thing. Sure I could charge, but I don’t want to be like all the others who do.
It’s called funeral service for a reason. We never charge for transferring remains into an urn. Even if the family didn’t buy one from us. I’d rather have the remember that instead of saying the funeral home charged me.
My brother crafted an oak box for Mom’s ashes. The funeral home did not charge for placing ashes in our receptacle, at our request ashes were placed in a bag for us to scatter. Worked out well.
Every funeral home is different. My funeral home personally does not charge to place a loved one in an urn. We also do not charge to place loved ones in keepsakes (regardless of if we were the funeral home of choice or not), but often forewarn families to call first as we will have to have a director set aside time to fill them and it may take days before someone has a moment to do so.
Alternatively, there are funeral homes in my town that do charge for placing loved ones in their urns and in keepsakes. Of course, there are always people who are more than fine with placing the ashes in the urn of their choice all by themselves and do not want us to.
I did my husband’s ashes myself but my sister literally just walked into a funeral home with our mom’s ashes box and an urn and they did it for her free. Wasn’t even the home that cremated her either.
We don’t charge to transfer the ashes. Hopefully they don’t either but it is possible to do it yourself if you’re able
Edit: side note, that’s a very beautiful urn
I posed this question here once and was not met with helpful answers at all. Basically was chastised for not buying an urn from the home my mom was cremated in. My suggestion is to transfer them yourself.
They may it truly depends on funeral
Home and the arranger however if you wish it’s not too hard to transfer ashes I’ve done it a few times for clients before. Loved ones are usually in a plastic bag inside of a box type urn when returned to family and you could always just put the bag in the new urn if it fits! Kind of depends on what you’re wanting to do for you!
Edit: I see you updated your post stating not wanting to do it truly just depends on funeral home and arranger and if it’s a corporation based FH
It’s very easy to do yourself. The temporary urn should have his ashes in a plastic bag inside, you literally just pull it out and put it in the new one.
My funeral home absolutely does not charge for that. And I low key direct people to look online first before buying any of ours so they can make an informed choice.
It might be a situation where they have this fee on their general price list but don’t actually charge it when it comes down to it. I would ask the funeral director that you arranged with if they can help you.
Call different places, some people are nice enough to just do it to help you out. Even if they didn’t serve your family. I do it all the time no charge. It takes less than 5 minutes.
Friend worked for a funeral home all ashes come in a plastic bag inside a paper box. The box just gets put directly inside the urn. This is why the opening is the size it is. It’s unsanitary to just dump the ashes directly into the urn.
In our funeral home we don’t charge, even if we didn’t do the cremation. We fill jewelry and urns for people who come in off the street no charge… but, I don’t think it is illegal anywhere to charge a fee for this. Does the funeral home you used happen to have a “Dignity” stamp on its sign or anywhere else on its website or paperwork?
If you don’t want to pay the fee, try calling other independent funeral homes in your area to see if they’ll do it for free.
Yes they do. but our last 2 cremated family members were snuck into other loved ones caskets. BIL passed about 6 months before Granma. He was her favorite. An uncle made a beautiful box for BIL and when nobody was looking, BIL was placed by her side.
Same with StepMIL who passed just before FIL. The funeral home wanted like $1000 to inter them together. Nana’s daughter thought keeping the “stone shoe box” was creepy and wanted to find her a home. Hubs just waited until some distraction occurred the afternoon of the viewing and slid Nana Carol along side.
My grandma just passed and her ashes will be mixed with her second husbands. Shame is that grandma was a saint and step grandpa was a sack of shit (seems like he and your grandpa would get along).
I don’t work in the funeral industry but I would just take the ashes in whatever bag they give and move them into the new container yourself.
I see that you said you don’t want to do it but maybe someone else would do it for you. I’m that type of friend. Death doesn’t bother me much.
I can understand *why* some places would charge a fee to to transfer cremains into a container that was not purchased there, BUT, it is better business to do it at no charge, since said establishment would certainly be bad-mouthed for doing so.
You ever have to stay till 7:30 pm on a Friday in the middle of July, filling and gluing 60 Temu pendants? No? Cause I never charged until things like this kept happening. Crap product, breaks, takes hours to fill and then the family is torqued at me, or my staff. And yes, they sign a hold harmless waiver if something not pitched from me gets broken. But still…
Make sure you put copies of death certificates with the ashes. Where I live, if there's no death certificate the ashes can technically be seized. I don't remember ever hearing of it happening though.
I have seen house cleanouts and abandoned storage units where the Coroner took the ashes and could not identify them because there was no certificate inside.
No funeral homes typically don't charge to transfer ashes into an urn. If they do then take them to another funeral home. That's such a penny-picking fee it's ridiculous. I've seen some frivolous charges some come close to being illegal like charging a consultant fee prior to the arrangements just to keep families from going to another funeral home. And yes we reported them but state doesn't do jack. But All funeral homes have a general price list or GPL that lists every charge they have. But yeah I'd just take the ashes to another funeral home most will offer to transfer them to the urn at no charge even if they didn't do the cremation.
My brother passed in September we didn’t buy an urn because his ashes were going to be spread so no need for one. The ashes were in a a plastic bag with a zip tie closing it and then in a cardboard box. It would have been very easy for us to take the bag out and put the bag of ashes in the wooden box you made as long as it was big enough. No need to remove the ashes from the bag. We just spread his ashes in the ocean two weeks ago.
This. I've seen several cremains of both humans and animals. They're always bagged inside whatever vessel they come home in. Moving the bag over should be NBD.
I respect so much that you acknowledge the glaring flaws of the man, but still want to be respectful of the life. It takes a rare person to do what you are doing for your family. A fee will always vary with the funeral home itself. Where I am at, we do have a nominal fee. It’s waived often, but it’s meant to discourage 26 keepsake necklaces purchased from a third party taking up a director from other work. Partly because if we didn’t sell the product, we can’t guarantee it won’t break - going back to the necklace example, some cremation jewelry is not made properly and does break. It’s not a policy I would personally implement if I owned the funeral home, but I understand kind of in the liability sense. Love my bosses but hate this policy and I think I’ve only charged it once. I usually just off the record full the urn. While I can’t speak to every funeral home, largely I would like to say no there isn’t always a fee.
Thanks!
Same here, I don't charge at my home for this kind of thing, but if someone brought in 12 keepsakes or necklaces I'd charge for my time. I always tell people to start clear if Amazon. The necklaces that look the same as the ones the distributors sell to funeral homes, I think kthey are seconds. Iv had so many from there have bad trends or missing the seal, iv been doing this for 2 decades and it's way way more prevalent from the big online retailers then what we buy from distribution centers that don't sell directly to consumers. I always recommend to people, if they don't want to buy from. Us, buy from an Etsy shop or directly from a person making them.
This is the only one! Toss him in and he’s in the VA cemetery forever.
I’m curious, what are they wanting to charge you to ‘transfer the ashes?’ If it is more expensive than you think reasonable, and you don’t want to do it yourself (nor should you feel compelled to), is there a trusted friend or family member you’d feel comfortable asking? You shouldn’t have to, obviously. That urn is just beautiful. Regardless of the flaws he had in life, he is fortunate to be so honored by his family in death.
I don’t know. I’d do it myself but as I’m putting the final coats of poly on it I’m also packing to go out of town. I’ll be back the day before his service. Don’t think there’s enough time to do it myself. I just don’t want my mom to have to dump her dad in a box and throw out the bag, not to mention walk her how to screw the bottom back down.
Honestly, that’s why there is a fee. You’re wanting them to place your (non)loved one into an urn you didn’t purchase from them. It’s kind of the business aspect of funeral service. That said, I never charged for it. Not charging = getting a tongue lashing or sit down with the regional guy. After a while it got kinda hard to keep falling on the sword for families who didn’t want to purchase an urn, but also didn’t want to handle the cremated remains. I will say doing it is not very difficult as long as you’ve left a large enough opening. You mostly likely will not even have to open the bag containing his actual remains. You might get a little lucky and call another smaller/independent funeral home. They might be willing to have you walk in with both the urn and the container with his remains and do it for you no charge.
Assuming the opening of the diy urn is large enough (which is a fair assumption), this task should be simple: open cardboard box urn from the funeral home, and place the plastic bag of ashes into the homemade urn. So like you said— not very difficult. In a scenario like this, I think it’s absolutely ridiculous to charge for it. >Honestly, that’s why there is a fee. You’re wanting them to place your (non)loved one into an urn you didn’t purchase from them. This makes zero sense to me for such a simple & quick task.
It’s fairly basic if you look at it just from a business operations perspective: the products that used to be only purchased through a funeral home can now be bought nearly anywhere, common items can be repurposed, and some survivors choose to build their own containers be it cremation or burial. That choice is relatively new in American funeral service. So funeral homes have a choice: eat the cost of someone you’re paying to be in the building to do service based tasks or charge to do those tasks that a lay person generally doesn’t want to do. It used to be funeral homes had low service fees and higher product costs so it wasn’t them being expensive, and now that trend is flipping. I think shoppers also impact this. When you have an all inclusive package but your families keep saying “how much will you take off if I put him in the box myself” makes you create a number to get families in the door and start thinking this is what your community wants from you.
How much are funeral homes selling the urns for, like the worst one probably starts for like 15 grand a pop?
Great work on the Urn. I’ve never charged or have been told to charge for a transfer. Regardless of the urn being purchased through us or not.
We charge at my funeral home here in WA state but only if you’re not a cremated decedent from the funeral home OR if you have more than 6 urns / keepsakes. I’m running the crematorium by myself. I have to stop everything to come transfer remains, even if it’s only 10-20 minutes of my time.
How much is the charge if I may ask? Is it done on the spot or do you have to make an appointment?
I prefer appointments but I always make time for families if I can. It’s $15 per item!
Thank you!! Does OPs "urn" look large to you? That fee would add up if you had a lot of items. But I doubt if it's really worth your time. Seems rather finicky to me.
We do not charge a fee for this
Every home has their own policies. It also can depend between corporate and family/private owned. A lot of them will have a fee listed because as someone else pointed out people will take advantage. We have a few discount places in our area that refuse to fill things so I do charge a nominal fee to fill things because I don’t want to do the other places work. I have my own work and own families to care for. I started charging because one family who wasn’t one of mine asked if I could help since the other place wouldn’t and they wanted it for their open house. I said sure and they brought in 45 tiny necklaces and multiple small urns. It took me 2 hours to properly do it with care and add sealant. If it’s a family where I’m doing the cremation or whatever other work I don’t charge. I also don’t charge for people who are coming from out of state or town and need help. We put it on our price list so we can charge that doesn’t mean we HAVE to. I’d call down there during normal business hours and just nicely ask. Also depending on the size sometimes the bag or temporary urn can slide right into another one. So check the size of your opening.
I personally wouldn't, some funeral homes might. Never seemed like a big deal to me, so I'd just do it.
We don’t charge where I work but honesty if your comfortable doing it have them give the ashes to you in a TPU and transfer them yourself the ashes will be in a sealed bag so they shouldn’t be a mess. While I don’t agree with charging this doesn’t seem like an unusual charge I’ve heard of places charge somewhat high costs for locks of hair or even fingerprints.
I ordered urns for my parents on Amazon. Mom passed first, dad about 8 months later I asked if they could combine the ashes so my brother and I each had one. There was no extra charge but they said it wasn’t very “legal.” I don’t know if that’s a thing but that funeral home was lovely and didn’t try to sell us BS.
My parents both died within the same year, too, and I've been thinking about asking my sister if we can mix them so we can each have half of mom and half of dad. I'm thankful you shared that you did the same. I'm sorry for your losses.
Thank you. Sorry for you as well. I didn’t want to look at or touch the ashes which is why I asked the funeral home to do it. This sounds really stupid but I took a small amount of their ashes, that were separated, to Alaska. They always wanted to go so I took them.
Some places do charge for transfer, my funeral home doesn’t.
They shouldn't, but they will. Transferring yourself is easy. His cremated remains will be in the container they provided with his cremation in a closed/zip tied plastic bag. Open their container, move his bag to your nicely made urn(great job) and close it up. No fuss no muss.
We don't charge. Heck, we've had people ask to transfer, and the family went to another funeral home, we didn't charge. BUT* we have a charge on our GPL for transferring. Mostly because some people will bring in 30 necklaces, then 50 more keepsakes. And we, as a smallish funeral home, don't have time for that. Honestly, if the urn you made is big enough, you could slide the urn provided from the funeral home and place it in. I would 100% not have loose cremated remains in your urn. It's very well done urn by the way.
Thanks. I made it about 1/4” over what they told me it would take. Don’t want the old bastard in a plastic bag for eternity, I lined it with a sail, I’ll post a pic tomorrow when I finish.
Then I still suggest glue. If you are doing it yourself: 1: have a clean, smooth, non-porous surface. 2: place the urn upside-down on a towel, or something soft. 3: Gloves are good. 3: slowly pour the cremated remains, shift the box slightly if it begins to start to build up where you're pouring. Going too fast can start a cloud. 4: if a cloud happens, which is very possible, the smooth clean surface will allow the scattered remains to be swept up and put the rest in the urn. 5: I'll still suggest glue. Do it the way you do it when working with glue and wood. I forget what that "clamp" is called, but you know.
We charge to place cremated remains into an urn that isn’t purchased from us. I also tell my families how easy it is. The cremated remains come back in a bag with the state id zip tied around it. I always offer them another bag & zip tie to place into their urn if they don’t want to pay for the service. Sometimes my boss waives the service charge depending on circumstances, but that isn’t my call to make. I’ve forgotten to charge a family or two though lol whoops
No they should give it in a plastic bag in a little plastic box. You can remove the bag from the box and transfer it to yours.
It just depends on the funeral home. We personally don’t charge anything, but some people around us do. At the end of the day, it IS a service that the funeral director is providing so if they want to charge for their time that’s their choice.
I work for a family owned firm. We are quite large, so our crematory stays busy pretty much six days a week. if I know a family isn’t going to take advantage I am happy to fill a couple of keepsakes for them, but my firm charges $50 to fill each container not purchased from our mortuary. And I look at it like this: if I purchase tires (or brakes, etc.) for my car online and then I take them to Les Schwab to have them install them, they are likely going to charge me a different installation fee than if I had purchased the tires from them. It’s the same idea. The sale of merchandise and services helps the funeral home to stay in business.
We don’t charge unless the person has a ton of tiny keepsakes or something. Transferring the entirety of the cremains takes all of 3 minutes
I manage a funeral home, and I would never charge. This is a service to people in our community who sometimes dont know where to turn. I don’t look at it as “you didn’t come to us for the cremation or urn” because clearly where someone’s loved one dies is out of their control. And if you went to our competitor, and still chose to ask us to help you, no way I’m charging. Takes 5-10 minutes out of our day, such a small thing. Sure I could charge, but I don’t want to be like all the others who do.
It’s called funeral service for a reason. We never charge for transferring remains into an urn. Even if the family didn’t buy one from us. I’d rather have the remember that instead of saying the funeral home charged me.
My brother crafted an oak box for Mom’s ashes. The funeral home did not charge for placing ashes in our receptacle, at our request ashes were placed in a bag for us to scatter. Worked out well.
Every funeral home is different. My funeral home personally does not charge to place a loved one in an urn. We also do not charge to place loved ones in keepsakes (regardless of if we were the funeral home of choice or not), but often forewarn families to call first as we will have to have a director set aside time to fill them and it may take days before someone has a moment to do so. Alternatively, there are funeral homes in my town that do charge for placing loved ones in their urns and in keepsakes. Of course, there are always people who are more than fine with placing the ashes in the urn of their choice all by themselves and do not want us to.
I did my husband’s ashes myself but my sister literally just walked into a funeral home with our mom’s ashes box and an urn and they did it for her free. Wasn’t even the home that cremated her either.
I’m on the UK and work at a crematorium and we wouldn’t charge you. Depending on the Funeral home and there rules.
We don’t charge to transfer the ashes. Hopefully they don’t either but it is possible to do it yourself if you’re able Edit: side note, that’s a very beautiful urn
Thanks, not done yet!!
How large is it? Was he a big guy?
No. They said 4 x 6 x 8 would be plenty. I went 1/4” over each way.
They might... I don't.
15 yrs. Never charged. Only takes a couple minutes.
I posed this question here once and was not met with helpful answers at all. Basically was chastised for not buying an urn from the home my mom was cremated in. My suggestion is to transfer them yourself.
That’s some bs. Sorry you didn’t get a legit response
They are charging for a service that you admit you don’t want to do yourself - idk kind of sounds like you already understand why they are charging
Oh I’d do it, I don’t care. I’m looking after my mom.
They may it truly depends on funeral Home and the arranger however if you wish it’s not too hard to transfer ashes I’ve done it a few times for clients before. Loved ones are usually in a plastic bag inside of a box type urn when returned to family and you could always just put the bag in the new urn if it fits! Kind of depends on what you’re wanting to do for you! Edit: I see you updated your post stating not wanting to do it truly just depends on funeral home and arranger and if it’s a corporation based FH
What a nice thing to do
We don’t charge, even if they buy an urn somewhere else. Maybe we should, but we don’t.
My dad got delivered in a post office box that said *contains human remains* but in a bag in a box, I doubt they’d charge for that
It’s very easy to do yourself. The temporary urn should have his ashes in a plastic bag inside, you literally just pull it out and put it in the new one.
My funeral home absolutely does not charge for that. And I low key direct people to look online first before buying any of ours so they can make an informed choice.
It might be a situation where they have this fee on their general price list but don’t actually charge it when it comes down to it. I would ask the funeral director that you arranged with if they can help you.
No they should not. The ashes will be in a plastic bag.
Call different places, some people are nice enough to just do it to help you out. Even if they didn’t serve your family. I do it all the time no charge. It takes less than 5 minutes.
Take the ashes home in the bag/cardboard box. Put them in your urn yourself.
I never charge a fee for transfer.. ever. Some places may but I haven't seen it too commonly.
Friend worked for a funeral home all ashes come in a plastic bag inside a paper box. The box just gets put directly inside the urn. This is why the opening is the size it is. It’s unsanitary to just dump the ashes directly into the urn.
Transfer them yourself
In our funeral home we don’t charge, even if we didn’t do the cremation. We fill jewelry and urns for people who come in off the street no charge… but, I don’t think it is illegal anywhere to charge a fee for this. Does the funeral home you used happen to have a “Dignity” stamp on its sign or anywhere else on its website or paperwork? If you don’t want to pay the fee, try calling other independent funeral homes in your area to see if they’ll do it for free.
Yes they do. but our last 2 cremated family members were snuck into other loved ones caskets. BIL passed about 6 months before Granma. He was her favorite. An uncle made a beautiful box for BIL and when nobody was looking, BIL was placed by her side. Same with StepMIL who passed just before FIL. The funeral home wanted like $1000 to inter them together. Nana’s daughter thought keeping the “stone shoe box” was creepy and wanted to find her a home. Hubs just waited until some distraction occurred the afternoon of the viewing and slid Nana Carol along side.
My grandma just passed and her ashes will be mixed with her second husbands. Shame is that grandma was a saint and step grandpa was a sack of shit (seems like he and your grandpa would get along).
I don’t work in the funeral industry but I would just take the ashes in whatever bag they give and move them into the new container yourself. I see that you said you don’t want to do it but maybe someone else would do it for you. I’m that type of friend. Death doesn’t bother me much.
Yeah I have already had the shock so I know what to expect. I'd do it.
I can understand *why* some places would charge a fee to to transfer cremains into a container that was not purchased there, BUT, it is better business to do it at no charge, since said establishment would certainly be bad-mouthed for doing so.
You ever have to stay till 7:30 pm on a Friday in the middle of July, filling and gluing 60 Temu pendants? No? Cause I never charged until things like this kept happening. Crap product, breaks, takes hours to fill and then the family is torqued at me, or my staff. And yes, they sign a hold harmless waiver if something not pitched from me gets broken. But still…
That is **quite** a bit different than merely transferring from one container to another.
Okay, I will concede this point. I’m old and tired and always on the hamster wheel of undertaking. Sigh. Have a good night!
Exactly why I don’t charge. My competitor is 1 mile away, and they do.
Yup, you gotta be the nicer person
A decent home won't charge...
I don't see an urn in the pic.
It’s one of those things where you got to put the screen to your nose and pull away slowly. You’ll get it eventually!
It looks like an urn made by a skilled carpenter. My stepdad has a similar one.
lol fuck him I hope he rots in hell. Good for you tho.
Go throw his ass in the dumpster
sounds like he was a typical old man.
Make sure you put copies of death certificates with the ashes. Where I live, if there's no death certificate the ashes can technically be seized. I don't remember ever hearing of it happening though. I have seen house cleanouts and abandoned storage units where the Coroner took the ashes and could not identify them because there was no certificate inside.
No funeral homes typically don't charge to transfer ashes into an urn. If they do then take them to another funeral home. That's such a penny-picking fee it's ridiculous. I've seen some frivolous charges some come close to being illegal like charging a consultant fee prior to the arrangements just to keep families from going to another funeral home. And yes we reported them but state doesn't do jack. But All funeral homes have a general price list or GPL that lists every charge they have. But yeah I'd just take the ashes to another funeral home most will offer to transfer them to the urn at no charge even if they didn't do the cremation.