My father passed away quickly and unexpectedly, and my uncle knows the funeral director of Soderstrum. It was a Friday, and the services needed to be put into place quickly, so I just went with the recommendation as I didn’t know where else to go. Let me start by saying, I wouldn’t recommend Soderstrum even if it was free. First of all, at the initial meeting, there was a price discussed for the services. A week or so later, I received the total bill, and it was over twice the amount that was ever discussed. Not to mention his suggestion of using the “church donation lunch,” for food, and to see it later billed for $350 on the invoice was infuriating. I understand they are running a business, but the shadiness revolving around the pricing is just ridiculous. Now, onto the customer service! Or the lack thereof. At the visitation, it was an extremely hot day, and my family is BIG. It was just as hot inside the small funeral home as it was outside. Since my family is large, people gathered and talked for quite some time. Halfway through the visitation, Marc tells me he has to, “leave to mow his mother’s lawn,” and introduces me to somebody else that works for the funeral home. If you’re going to leave in the middle of a service YOU are providing, you better have a good reason, and, frankly, lawn care isn’t one of them. Then I was thinking, well if he is going to do something like this, maybe it’s better for this other gentleman to take over. Spoiler alert: I was wrong. Majority of family and friends had left by the scheduled time the visitation was over, and there were only a handful left when it was technically over. We were clearly saying our goodbye’s and getting ready to walk out when the gentleman decided to turn the lights off on us BEFORE we were even out of the building. The disrespect was just insane. Oh, also! I was trying to pick between two caskets, and the one I ultimately chose was due to a little bird detailing on the inside of the door, because my father was a huge Cardinal’s fan. The funeral director heard me say this, and decided to never disclose the fact that he decided to have it be a closed casket service. My sister also made an extra trip to deliver his final outfit to him, to which he also never mentioned it would be closed casket. I found out it was closed by walking into the room and seeing it was closed. Now, I am no expert with mortuary services, however, my best friend happens to have a degree in mortuary science and works at a funeral home. However, she is licensed in the state of a Minnesota, which is why I couldn’t have her provide the services for me. She obviously knew the details of my dad’s passing, and she said that there is absolutely no reason for the services to have been closed casket, other than laziness. At the initial meeting, my dad’s mother was with. He offered a second plot for her, to which she took. However, lots of family drama happened after the funeral, and there was a falling out with her. I immediately contacted Marc to have the second plot taken off the bill before it was paid for. Long story short, Marc gave excuses for months as to why the second plot was never taken off the bill. The head guy was on vacation, or it was farming season so he was busy, or he hadn’t had a chance to talk to the other mysterious ‘board members.’ So I ultimately had to pay $200 for a plot that wouldn’t even be next to my father’s. The only compliment I can give them is that they were flexible with getting payment for the services when we were able to provide it. Which should be a given, considering he never dated or signed the contract that states when the services- that were double the amount we had ever discussed- had to be paid in full. Take your money elsewhere.

Edited Jan. 5, 2017: Soderstrum Funeral Home and Adams Funeral Home are linked and I was contacted by the owner of Adams Funeral Home in Ames and we discussed my review and what problems occurred. The gentleman was very polite and listened and made no excuses. He just wanted to try to rectify the situation. About 2 weeks after my grandfather's funeral, a couple of my aunts and uncles and myself sat down at Adams Funeral Home with the owner of Adams and the owner of Soderstrum and we discussed the issues of technology, poor customer service, and the chipped urn. The owners returned part of the payment made for my grandfather's funeral and expressed remorse of the situation and how it was handled. I wanted to post an update so even though I'm not removing my original post because it did happen that way, I wanted to tell people that the owners do care and came with a compromise with my family. Original: My grandfather passed away last week and he had all of his funeral arrangements made and already paid for through Soderstrum Funeral Home. I arrived at the visitation to find a very unhelpful employee who didn't care that their equipment was so outdated that it couldn't even play a DVD slideshow that I had to make myself since no employees knew how to do it. He literally sat in his office doing a newspaper crossword while my husband had to run home to get our dvd player. The employee didn't help move any chairs, equipment, flowers, or anything else. He just sat. Then at the funeral, Soderstrum put my grandfather's remains (cremated) in a chipped urn. It was the sample that they showed my mother, aunts, & uncles but he said that they would bring in a brand new one for my grandfather since he had already paid for it. Funerals are expensive and I have no idea why they couldn't do what my grandfather paid for and why their location and equipment are so outdated. They literally make thousands of dollars a year off of people dying. One plus is that the old man in the green jacket opening the door for people was very friendly.

Known the Sodastream for over 20 years great place for a funeral even though and that's a sad time always do a great job