HDQDD

My wife passed away (unexpectedly) last February. I had to cancel 5-6 planned itins with DL in the days/weeks after. I have to say DL couldn't have handled it better IMO. The first call I made was on our 2nd of 3 ER visits preceding her death. As others said, they asked for the hospital info, but I just gave them the main phone number, and to my knowledge they never called. The day she passed, they didn't ask for anything as I cancelled the next two weeks of trips. I called at least once more to cancel another trip, and they still didn't ask for anything. That's one of the reasons I love DL.

The flip side of that coin was Wells Fargo (Dealer Services), who by far had the worst customer service of any company I've ever dealt with (needed them to re-title a joint auto we had). As a result I closed all our WF accounts, paid off the car and I will never do business with WF (or any of it's shell companies) again.

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).

flyerCO

Hospital deaths are a mix. Some have known issues, others only go when somethung finally happens. The first is closer to hospice, known cause, expected, thus quick and filed. The latter (including all OR deaths) take longer.

CJKatl

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.

HDQDD

I'm sure "manner of death" has a bearing on how long it takes too. My wife's COD was a pulmonary embolism which was considered "Natural" (even though she was only 37).

Zorak

... I was going to say, you must have an interestingly wide array of experiences and/or my sympathies :-/

However you do seem to be adding qualifiers to this now, so I think we can back off slightly from the original absolute claim.