Abbey Memorials Reviews 

Reply from Abbey Memorials

Aug 25, 2020

Thank you for your review J.G.

As you chose to post a review publicly - rather than contact me directly to outline your feelings - I feel in the interest of balance that my response also needs to be public. Out of respect for your privacy I have not published your name in my response.

You placed your order for a memorial on 18th December 2019. You were told in writing of the possible manufacturing timescale and its reasons before you placed the order. The order required us to supply a high quality memorial at a price that you accepted once you had signed the order form.

We said at that time - in writing - that the possible timescale for manufacturing the memorial could be 12 to 16 weeks after we received the cemetery permit approval. We also confirmed in writing that the subsequent installation would then be when we were next in that part of the UK to fix a number of memorials.

Following the receipt of the cemetery permit we emailed to you on 4th February the inscription layout document and made our request for the second deposit via a covering letter - which again explained the possible timescale involved from that point onwards.

You subsequently called to pay your second deposit . The inscription layout document had to be emailed to you again as the original one had been sent to the email address shown on the order form. You had changed your email address and, whilst you had told us this (the new address was held in our notes) my colleague had, in error, used the one that was in the order form. I sincerely apologise for this mistake. My staff are human. Occasionally mistakes happen.

You signed the inscription layout document on 10th March. We then allocated your order to our factory work schedule. The inscription’s rubber template was created and cut off on 18th March in readiness of the inscription being engraved onto the headstone by one of my letter cutters.

On 23rd March the Prime Minister put the UK into lockdown. We therefore had no choice but to close our factory and cease all memorial installations. My manufacturing and installations staff were put on furlough along with some of my office staff - whilst a small number of office staff carried on working remotely to help progress customer orders in order to try minimise any delays once we were able to restart manufacturing and installing again.

I was not able to fully re-open the factory until the beginning of July. Even so many cemeteries in the UK were still not allowing memorial work to restart at that time - which caused us a number of problems with over 300 memorials to try and install throughout the UK and many customers wanting their memorial to be installed first.

This was a particularly stressful time for my office and manufacturing staff who were working long hours doing their best to try and manufacture and install as many memorials as possible in the shortest possible time.

Nevertheless your memorial was one of the first memorials that were installed once we were in a position to restart manufacturing and installing. The installation of the memorial occurred on 23rd July ie in time for the anniversary of your husband’s death on 25th July.

Had the Covid 19 pandemic not occurred your memorial would have been installed by the end of March or the beginning of April. This would have been well within our quoted manufacturing timescale. The lockdown prevented us from manufacturing and installing memorials for over three months. As soon as we were able to do so we completed the manufacture of your memorial and installed it into the cemetery.

If you ignore the 98 days that we were closed due to Covid 19 we were still able to manufacture and install the memorial within 12 weeks of the permit's receipt.

You have said in your review that you are satisfied with the memorial that we have supplied and you have also confirmed that we met your deadline. We have, therefore, fully met the terms of the contract that you entered into when you signed the order form ie for us to manufacture and install a high quality memorial at a price acceptable to you.

This was in spite of the incredible unprecedented difficulties caused to us - as manufacturers- by being closed for over three months. I am sorry that we were not able to install the memorial in March or April as expected but we were physically unable to do so due to the lockdown.

Yours sincerely
Mark Steen
Managing Director
Abbey Memorials Limited

Reply from Abbey Memorials

Aug 25, 2020

thank you for your feed back and kind words Glenda - I have fed your comments back to all concerned.

thank you for trusting us with your Mum's memorial headstone

kind regards
Mark Steen
Managing Director

Reply from Abbey Memorials

Aug 25, 2020

thank you for your review Clare - it is always nice to be able to report back to my staff that their efforts have been appreciated by the customer.

Thank you for allowing us to handle your order

kind regards

Mark Steen
Managing Director

Reply from Abbey Memorials

Oct 21, 2019

Thank you for your comments Sarah. I am sorry that you felt the need to leave such a review. We have supplied thousands of memorials throughout the UK since 1979 so I take such feedback seriously.



You contacted us 5 weeks ago to request a quotation. I responded myself directly to you by email at that time saying that I needed more information than that which you had supplied



The dimensions that you originally provided related to the base of the memorial and not the actual engravable space on the top tier. This meant that the initial calculations that I had undertaken had to be scrapped and new calculations were then necessary based on the smaller sized top tier



In the interim period I have had key office staff off on annual holiday and absent through illhealth – which has impacted upon our normal processing timescale of quotation requests – and which meant that efforts had to be focussed on meeting the needs of customers who had actually already placed orders with us – rather than ignoring their needs by chasing new business.



In an ideal world the needs of both existing and potential customers would receive equal treatment but, occasionally, things are not ideal and priorities have to be made to cover short term temporary situations.



I am sure that, had you been one of the scores of customers whose memorial orders we were processing, you would want us to dedicate our temporarily reduced service to meeting your needs as one who has paid us the relevant deposit and trusted us with your order – rather than overlook your needs whilst we pursued new orders.



I am truly sorry that there was has been delay in providing you with the quotation that you wanted. I should have emailed to you that I could not provide you with the quotation as quickly as you would want. I am sorry about that. However I never promised anything to you.



I have questioned each of my staff regarding any telephone messages that they may have taken between the hours of 9 to 5 (I took none myself) – and I will be doing the same of our “out of hours” answering service to find out why the calls were not passed to me



As for your advice in your review to other potential customers – you have outlined to them your experience of dealing with us and I have now taken the opportunity of explaining to those same readers of your review what happened. It was not ideal.



I will email my advices and costings to you separately so at least you have something to compare with other stonemasons’ quotations.



You could, of course, take the advice that I will be providing you with to another stonemason - who may be more expensive than us - but you will at least have the benefit of a practical recommendation from myself that I will be making with my quotation that you may not have considered - one I feel would offer the memorial’s inscription greater longevity than that which the existing memorial has enjoyed (and therefore offer the prospect of lower future maintenance costs).

Kind Regards,

Mark Steen
Managing Director
Abbey Memorials Ltd