Brookdale Senior Living Cypress Village Short-changed us on refund when mother died before moving into their Memory Unit Jacksonville Florida

After a series of small strokes, our mother landed in the Health Center at Cypress Village (CV), a medically-staffed facility attached to the CV apartment complex where she lived more than 11 years. When her Medicare benefits were about to run out, my brother was advised that CV would not release her back to her apartment. No, he was told, she needed to be in their new, expensive Memory Unit despite the fact she had no discernible memory problems.

Believing the doctors in the Health Center, my brother signed a contract for her room in the Memory Unit and placed a deposit of over $7000 to cover the first month's rent along with CV's so-called "community fee". But our mother was actually in the final stages of dying, as we subsequently learned the day she was to move into her new Unit but was rushed to the hospital instead. We later learned from the compassionate people at Hospice that she had in fact been dying for weeks because all 7 of the signs indicating the final stages of dying were present in her. And within 48 hours, she was indeed dead.

But did CV do the right thing and refund our money since no services were ever provided to our mother in their Memory Unit? No. And only after five months did they refund some of the our money, choosing to keep the lion's share of our good-faith deposit. They kept the fee along with the amount which would cover her care from the signing of the contract to the day she was intended to move in: a total of 9 days. This amount is over $3700!

CV did absolutely nothing to earn that money. And since my brother was given a misdiagnosis about the seriousness of our mother's condition, it's clear CV was looking only to fill their expensive beds and pad their pockets. It's unconscionable to keep money for services never rendered, and I believe their contract is unenforceable since they coerced my brother to sign it by misrepresenting her true condition.

These are the facts as we her 5 children know them. Despite attempts to contract the CEO at Cypress Village by letter and email, we have failed to receive any response. Even the lodging of a formal complaint with the Florida Attorney General's Office has failed to elicit a response from CV's CEO.

We are also waiting for the promised 80% return of our mother's Apartment, which she pruchased for $75,000. She died in March of 2014, and CV has up to one year to sell her apartment and give us back the money. But of course they are in no hurry to do that.

After the treatment we have received at their hands, I no longer trust this group. And this past August the Brookdale Company merged with Emeritus to become the largest provider of Senior Living services in the country. But as we have sadly learned throughout our history, bigger does not usually mean better.