Amherst Funeral and Cremation Services Inc.

I too found Amherst online. It was such a pleasure to deal with Scott McFarlane. He made an appointment and he came to my house.
He was upfront with all the costs, knowledgable, very personable and was a wealth of information about the next steps I have to take and affairs that needed to be taken care of.
I would highly recommend Scott and Amherst.

We went with the simple cremation package and the viewing. Scott and Chris were very prompt at calling us back after we filled the information online. The whole process was straightforward and simple. They even provided letters to cancel passport, SIN, and etc. They also provided multiple copies of the death certificate, which were very useful.

My father passed away unexpectedly in January =(
We made an appointment with a well known funeral home that other friends have used. They were friendly, knowledgable and offered full service complete packages. The bonus were freshly baked (oven hot) cookies, coffee and tea. We made an appointment and were given a «menu» of packages and services being offered. Unfortunately cheaper options are on the menu, but they’re not pointed out, so if you’re grief stricken and just going by what the funeral director tells you, you may miss it all together! For cremation we were told it was going to cost us $ 10,904!!! People kept telling us to be sure to ask the funeral homes if they have anything cheaper… so when we asked, they calculated the ala carte package which ended up «saving us» about $ 700, but was still going to cost us $ 10,250! Later when I went home I noticed there was also a plan B and C, but these were not shown to us. Although cheaper the packages were super basic and would still have us fork over over $ 5,000. They «get you» by offering things in a package, so even if you don’t want it, you don’t get much of a savings by deducting that item. Left the funeral home knowing to cremate my father the way we wanted was going to cost us over $ 7,000. Couldn’t believe it! HOLY MOLY!!!
In disbelief I kept googling to see if there were any other options, but sadly there were no prices listed on other sites and they seemed to be comparable anyhow! Was running out of time as had to make a decision within a day.
The benefits of being a late owl, after surfing for hours at about 2am happened across Georgia Straight’s Golden Plate awards for funeral homes and Amherst was rated number 1. Guess it couldn’t be all that bad, eh? So sent a quick email for more info.
What i liked right away was that Amherst didn’t try to hide anything and posted all their prices online. No hiding the info for you to inquire to be told you’d need to come in and meet and be given various packages. At the other funeral home we felt a bit pressured as everything is under time constraints and the funeral director seems like they’re on commission as they try to upsell you on everything!
I had emailed Amherst as their pricelist was basic and I wanted to find out the cost to do more than what they had offered… was upselling myself, which is a nice change! As well wanted to find out how quickly they could get the ball rolling as the other funeral home told us we needed 4 days lead time (I’m guessing this is how they get families to make a quick decision, by not giving you much time). Amherst only needed a few days.
Scott emailed me all the info in the morning before he had to head off to another service. I gave Scott a ring later that day and had a brief conversion and pretty much knew we would go with them within our 15 min call (we sat at the funeral home for over an hour).
Scott is super knowledgeable and answers all your questions, puts you at ease and gives you food for thought. Things to think about that you didn’t think about before.
Chris is a jack of all trades: office administrator, assistant (at the services), webmaster (great job with the memorial sites), graphic designer (he designs the memorial cards) and who knows what else he does! He was very easy to work with and because I’m a bit of a perfectionist and asked a lot of questions, he was willing to try new things on the websites to accomodate my needs/​requests. He replies right away… even super late at night! LOL
These guys have thought of everything. They even offer clients a template of letters for you to copy to send to various agencies to notify them of your loves one’s death. Makes it a lot easier and ensures you notify everyone you need to notify (well maybe 80% of the people you may need to notify).
Instead of paying over $ 7,000 to cremate my father with the other funeral home, we paid $ 4,300 with Amherst. Note this price also included their services for a viewing and funeral held on separate days as well as extra cost for a private cremation viewing, so you could definitely do it for much cheaper! But anyhow, that’s about a 30% savings! It’s a NO BRAINER, really!
So even though death is not a pleasant thing to deal with, it’s a part of life and one day when you have to deal with a friend/​relatives death, do yourself a favour and check out Amherst first. I bet you’ll want to sign up right away like we did and you’ll definitely be glad you did!
All i can say is Chris and Scott ROCK! Thanks for making this difficult time a lot easier, a little more stress free and definitely for making it more affordable!
p. s. no idea why there’s about 8 reviews that show as being filtered right now. To view them click on the lower left «filtered reviews» after the last review to see them or you can click this link

How weird is it to review this? Weird. But I’m doing it because it’s a brave new world – one where you can find everything and anything you need online, or at least find options.
That’s exactly what I did when I realized I’d need services of the kind Amherst provides. Their website is ‘to the point’. It provides all the information you need and no extraneous details or fine print. At times like this, you want everything to be easy, clear, simple, straight-​forward, and professional, all with the right amount of compassion.
That is exactly what we got. Exactly, making it just a bit easier to move forward and focus on everything else.

My mother passed away while visiting Vancouver from abroad. The staff at Amherst are professional, straight forward, no fuss but sincere. Competitively priced. They removed a lot of stress from a very difficult situation. Highly recommend.

I had an opportunity to use Amherst Cremation Care late 2011. They responded promptly, and their price was considerably lower than two other cremation companies I contacted. A representative from Amherst came to my home to do the paperwork. He told me the total cost and deliverables, which included the death certificate with 12 certified copies. He was a great help in providing guidance on all the procedures after a death (he supplied a checklist), and even provided a dossier of the forms and letters to file with the required government and financial institutions. They also placed the obituary with the local newspapers. I was happy with their service and would recommend this company to anyone seeking a reasonably priced cremation service.