Originally Posted by
HDQDD
If the person dies at a hospital I think it goes much faster (but surely it will vary by locality). I had my wife's DC in 5 days from Wake County. In NC it's common for the funeral home to take care of the DC requests.
Her death was referred to the ME, but the ME declined to review it (according to what the DC says).
When my mom passed away, the funeral home asked, in our initial meeting, how many copies we would need. The mortician suggested eight. He handed them to us at the funeral a couple days later. At the time, I believed if we did not get them from him it would take extra time to get them ourselves. This service was provided at no charge, but the mortician was a family friend, so this might have been an exception.
As for DL, I appear to be the only one that had a bad experience. I was in Ft Wayne on business and needed to get to SCE on a new ticket. DL charged the fee to change the first ticket and about $1k for the new ticket. I had another ticket for the day after that also needed to be changed and there was another change fee. This was ten years ago, so it sounds like things have changed. I didn't hang up and call back, which maybe I should have, but I had to call the funeral home and work to make arrangement. DL was not the least bit accommodating. And they knew she was dead because they transported the body from ATL to PIT.