Czelusniak Funeral Home of Northampton

A Good Choice I had just a few minutes to select a funeral home after getting a call from the state police officer. Even though my friend had called before to tell me, I was still in shock. I chose Czelusniak from a list of local providers, based on their green practices. Jay, Dan and James were so kind and compassionate. I had never made final arrangements for anyone before and they patiently helped me navigate through the maze paperwork and steps.

Jay handled my mother's cremation and celebration of life arrangements several years ago and I have only good things to say about him and the funeral home in general. He was warm, kind, efficient, and professional. While mourning a loss the last thing you want to worry about is whether the funeral home will do their job properly. With Czelusniak there were no worries at all.

I had a most disappointing experience with James Curtis at Czelusniak. First was his callous treatment of the remains. I had asked for the ashes not to be placed in a plastic bag, but despite acknowledging the request James apparently forgot all about it till he found me crying over the urn at the wake. I was destroyed to find my loved one in a plastic bag with a twist tie. Think twice about entrusting James with this sacred task of handling remains, lest you face a similarly distressing experience of having your explicit wishes surrounding remains disregarded. The second disappointment was James's poor explanation of the services included and inability to respond to questions about cost. We had no idea that the securing of a venue was included in the standard funeral fee and wasted hours of time during a time where we should have been grieving contacting every house of worship in Northampton and beyond trying to find a venue for a memorial service during COVID. When I told James about our struggle, he didn't mention that that would have been done by him normally, though he did offer to help. I asked him how much the charges would be for his assistance TWICE and he said that there are no charges, instead of explaining that this is part of a $750 fee which we had already signed our agreement too we had long forgotten the fees we had agreed to less than 24 hours after our loved one's passing. It didn't end here. Institutions with good customer service manage to turn a complaint into an opportunity to change customers' minds. Not so for James. When I saw the $750 charge I immediately called him to discuss the matter. James failed to return two calls over the course of a week, and only responded when I wrote to the company email address. When he did finally deign to contact me at that point, he was apologetic, admitted that he hadn't communicate clearly, and apologized for, in his words, his "lack of professionalism." He then asked me what he could do to make it better. I told him that I thought a discount on the fee would be appropriate since the services were not clearly communicated, the family had wasted a lot of time doing jobs that the funeral home was charging us for, and he himself had admitted to lack of professionalism. James did not think any discount was appropriate. But, he asked me again what I would like him to do to make things better. When I now instead asked him what HE thought he could do to make it better, he had no suggestions whatsoever. It made the whole apology appear most insincere. We paid the full fee. Still, as a manager myself I believe feedback is important, and I called and left a message requesting to speak with Jay, the owner. He also didn't call me back. Fee received from customer, back turned on customer? There are other funeral homes in Northampton. I haven't tried them, but I would venture a guess that they can't be worse.

Jay and his staff were amazing to work with when my father passed away. The Czelusniak family has owned and operated this funeral home for 4 generations and it shows in their professionalism and caring towards the families they serve in their time of grief.

They did an amazing job with my grandfathers funeral. So accommodating and so compassionate. They went above and beyond to make everything run very smoothly. Thank you so much to the guys that run this funeral home.