Garden of Memories

Losing a loved one is already a painful experience and places you in a difficult phase of life. Having to be subjected to deception, badgering/​bullying techniques to increase costs and poor customer service by the specialized service providers in the industry during this already hard time, makes matters even worse.
The management/​leadership team of historic Myrtle Hill Cemetery and Garden of Memories in Tampa, Florida is solely about money. They attempt to upcharge, over charge, change amounts and get additional money from the families by any means necessary. They don’t care about their employees, their reputation in the community and definitely not about the families they serve. Their customer service is horrible at best.
On one hand this industry is always promoting pre-​planning so when that time comes and you’re sad and in a very vulnerable emotional state, some of the difficult matters that must be taken care of to bury a loved one are lessened. At Myrtle Hill and Garden of Memories they say one thing on the telephone when you make the appointment about the costs for the final arrangements and then say a completely different more expensive thing when you are there at their facility to actually complete the final plans. Regardless of how much advance information you may provide, the costs will always be substantially more. The perception is that they punish you for the pre-​planning that your family may have done because now, for example, those same spaces purchased 10 – 30 years ago are now selling for 3 – 5 times as much and this is a missed opportunity to make more money for them. They change what they initially communicated when speaking with you on the telephone and they set out to charge more and to charge for any and everything they can possibly think to whether truly needed or not. All of these tactics are done in an effort to drive up the cost.
Tips: When the family has already purchased space in advance, your hands are tied and you must use the cemetery or memorial gardens they selected but try not to go to finalize the arrangements alone, do not use their funeral director, select independently and take your funeral director with you because she or he will be on «your» team and not quite as emotional as you are. They are knowledgeable and can hear and will listen differently than you would to what the cemetery representatives are stating and pushing you to do. You do not want to be taken advantage of when finalizing these plans. Try to avoid doing business with Myrtle Hill and Garden of Memories in Tampa, Florida if at all possible.
Recently, two of the largest corporations owning cemeteries and memorial gardens in the United States merged and essentially formed a monopoly so please be careful and try not to be taken advantage of during an already extremely vulnerable time in your life.