KOOTENAI COUNTY, Idaho — A grieving daughter, preparing for her beloved father’s memorial service, says she has been struggling to get answers on where exactly the custom urn she ordered for him wound up.
“I'm just not getting anywhere,” Dianne Shaw laments. “It's looking like I may just have to eat this cost and order another one.”
Dianne says her father was the kind of person who made this world a better place.
“He was a very hard worker—he supported his family well,” she remembers. "He was a jokester.”
The 86-year-old, best known by loved ones as ‘Jack,’ was always smiling. He was the life of the party.
“He liked to entertain people,” Dianne says. “I think he liked the attention too.”
And Dianne was always glad to give plenty of that, no matter where life took her father.
“My dad was over, living in Thailand,” she says. “I was able to go be with him in those last few months (before he passed away.)”
She's forever grateful for that as she's now planning to lay him to rest. Dianne says he died last summer in Thailand, but their family wanted to wait to have a formal memorial until a loved one could personal obtain his ashes from Thailand and bring them back to the United States. The gathering she is preparing for, set for next month, has been a long time coming.
“Our family is getting together in August for a memorial for him,” she says. “We were preparing to have the urn for his ashes.”
She turned to Amazon to find the perfect one via a third party seller on the site.
“I ordered it personalized,” she says. “It was pretty special.”
But, not arriving when expected.
“I realized it wasn't coming, it wasn't coming,” she says.
What she could find through the third party Amazon purchase indicates the urn may have been mistakenly shipped to a previous address.
She suspected there was an error in the address or shipping process, confident it never came to her current doorstep. Still, she says she searched all around, even popped by the old address asking if anyone had seen the urn. But—nothing. They hadn’t seen it, and neither had anyone else she asked.
She says all she wanted was for someone from Amazon to investigate further into the shipping or delivery confirmation—details she claims she couldn't access on her own. She says she tried multiple platforms to get some help.
“And I had been told by the seller, 'No refunds,' even before I could explain this situation,” she says. “I just wanted to talk with someone so they could look into it. (I got) a recording, saying our call volume is high.”
So, her next call was to our Help Me Hayley.
“I did what I could to remedy this,” Dianne says. “I've seen where (she has) helped so many people. These predicaments are difficult.”
One day after Hayley reached out to Amazon for clarity on what may have happened, Dianne received an email from customer service pledging their commitment to help her, and even guaranteed a refund if arrangements for a new urn couldn’t be made with the seller.
It's still unknown what happened to the original urn or where it wound up. Dianne opted to get her money back instead of purchasing again through the same third party.
It is crucial to vet third party sellers on Amazon before making purchases. Read reviews, and make sure you know exactly what their return policy is, if they even have one at all.
