Frustrated customers say a pet cremation company took their money and failed to give them their pets’ ashes back. Darsha Philips reports for the NBC4 News on April 19, 2024.
Two people are speaking out against a pet cremation company they said handed them their beloved cat back in a bag in a parking lot after initially ignoring them after they paid for the company’s services.
Dozens of reviews from grieving pet owners warn others to avoid using We Care Pet Cremations. According to reviews on Yelp and Google, numerous customers contacted the company to have their pets cremated but after handing over payment, the company stopped communicating with them or went months without getting their pets’ ashes.
Robert Balog and Tory Duchene are mourning the death of their 21-year-old cat, Stewie. The two lost their cat in February so they searched for a 24-hour pet cremation service and found We Care.
According to the pet parents, they paid the company $560 to cremate their cat and then went weeks without hearing back.
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“He became less and less responsive and I Google searched them more and I went found all the reviews,” Duchene said.
“I thought they threw him in the dumpster. I thought they threw his body on the side of the road,” Duchene said. “I very much thought we were never going to get him back.”
In wake of the company’s minimal communication, Balog and Duchene posted a video online sharing their experience. The video caught the attention of We Care and got in touch with the two. According to Balog, what happened next was simply bizarre.
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She said she was instructed to go to a parking lot of a Best Buy store in Oxnard. There, a man handed her a bag.
“I opened the bag to see that it was him and he is decomposing now,” Balog said.
She and Duchene said Stewie was never cremated, and they never received a refund.
“You are offering a service collecting money for a service, and then just disappearing,” Duchene said. “If that’s not the definition of a scam, then I don’t know what is.”
A family-friend of the person who runs We Care said the company is no longer operating since the owner is experiencing medical problems.
