Obituaries

We recently switched to paid obituaries. You get the first 70 words free and then we charge after that. This means we, the editorial staff, do not touch the obituaries.
As an editor it irks me a little that there is no consistency on style, but I can get past that.
It has caused a few problems though.
One person came in and complained about the names we left out and we should have put so-and-so's half brother once removed from California in there - or something like that. We tried multiple times to explain we print exactly what the funeral home gave us as is. We can check to see if something was inadvertently omitted, but it should be exactly as they gave it to us. So if there's a problem you need to check with the funeral home or the members of the family who worked with funeral home to writ the obit.
"Oh well, I guess maybe you didn't have enough space to list all the names," she replied with sigh - as though we did something wrong.
Some people just don't get it.
Then there was the funeral home that misspelled the name of the cemetery in town, but insisted it was the correct spelling. I drive by the sign everyday and have looked it up in the past. Sorry, funeral home, you're wrong. We have to change that one.
Really, you can't win with obits.