ScanDigital Photo Scanning

I was excited when Groupon offered a deal for photo scanning services. I had wanted to scan some of my film photos for some time, but was wary of sending it to out-of-the-USA photo scanning services recommended by friends. The fact that I could send my pictures to the same state made me feel better.

After sending in two orders, the CEO sent an email (probably some form email) that posed these questions (I've included my answers):

- How likely you are to use our service again?
Maybe. I scanned most of the pictures that I want electronic files of, but if I happen to sift through my parents photo albums, I may use your service again.

- Would you recommend our service to your friends and family members? Why or why not? I would recommend the service to people. Many of the photo scanning services used to be outside of the country, and that was scary for many of my friends. I've already recommended the service to several people.

- Do you have any feedback on our pricing options? Were they straight forward and easy to understand? The pricing was confusing and isn't easily understandable from the website. I had to call and get clarification regarding some points.

My only complaints are (1) the backlog and time for processing, and (2) when I received my return order, my pictures were returned in the order I sent them (as I requested), however, they were not packaged in a careful manner. Many of my pictures came back to me bent, which was disappointing. The saving grace for the bent photos is I now have them in digital form so I can reprint a new copy.

I had a couple thousand old photos to scan and was introduced to this site via Groupon. I bought three $100 and one $250 Groupons, which I applied to three separate orders. The first order went through with no problems-- it took about 5 weeks. The second order did not credit my Groupons correctly, and my credit card was therefore charged $200 more than it should have been. Two months and several phone calls later I am still waiting for the promised refund -- I finally reported the company. The same thing happened with my third order-- I'm still waiting for a $250 refund on that one, too. The third order also was delayed by a couple of weeks-- I saw that my credit card was billed, but I didn't receive the package. When I called, they found that my order had been set aside by mistake as part of another customer's "mail hold" -- she was apparently going on vacation and didn't want HER shipment to sit at the door while she was gone. I have no idea how my order got linked with hers, but all of this points to a company that doesn't have it together. That said, I was happy enough with the quality of the scans, once I got everything back. Now, if only they'd refund my $450!

Similar to other reviewers, using a Groupon I sent in super 8 movie films with sound, and got a response fairly quickly that they were received and in the queue, but then waited and waited. After 6 weeks I inquired about the status and almost immediately was charged another $40! The return shipping box that I thought was $10 was actually $20 - I could've used USPS Priority for much less, and and they said I sent in more feet of film than I thought. I went by the indicator on the reel, so perhaps it was not accurate. When I finally got the movies back, they had not included the sound - they were silent movies and the quality was only okay. I emailed to ask about the sound, and they informed me I had not sent them sound movies because if I had there would've been a magnetic sound strip on the edge. Of course, they had overlooked that my films had a magnetic sound strip, so I had to return them for a re-do. I'm still waiting. Last time I inquired they were still being reviewed. I'm just hoping to receive my films back and I will not use the company again.

I had been procrastinating for years in digitizing my photos. Finally, since I was downsizing and moving, I've decided to take on this major task since I'm the keeper of the family photos. I was so excited since I had over 3000 photos that needed scanning and organizing. I sent in 1400 photos to be scanned, packaging them as instructed. It took a while to receive them back but customer service was good about responding to my inquiries to request the status. I even received offers for discounts by email and was so confident in the service I thought I was receiving that I pre-paid for the next batch of 1000.

However, when I received the 1st scanned photos back, I was VERY disappointed. I had professional "sharp and clear" pictures included and they came back grainy with a line going down the middle. This was including my wedding pictures! Apparently, there is not a quality check before sending the pictures back. There was not one picture with good scanned quality. So, after talking to customer service, I was reluctant to try again but re-sent the same batch of pictures in because they claimed they received a brand-new scanner and it will be quality checked before sending it back.

I received them back the 2nd time, the professional pictures no longer had a line going down the middle which is good. However, the quality of all the pictures is below average to average at best. My cheap scanners at home do a better quality. Unfortunately, I pre-paid for that 2nd batch of 1000 pics since they offered a great discount. According to customer service, I can't receive a refund because it is too late and outside of their refund window policy. Lesson learned for me to NEVER do that again. They have great discounts and offers but what is the point of a discount if the quality is subpar.

I do NOT recommend this company. I do recommend that you spend the money on a good quality scanner, take your time, do it yourself OR find another company and only send in a small amount to test their quality first. I had even recommended them to other friends and I had to quickly call them to tell them not to use Scan Digital. I'm so disappointed. In total, I've lost $800. Please do not waste your money! STAY AWAY from Scan Digital!

Terrible company!

I used a Groupon to have photos put on a CD, I am out of work at the moment so I thought it would a nice inexpensive gesture to have some of my moms photos put on a disc for her. Before purchasing I called and asked about how many photos will the Groupon cover. I was told up to 1000. I sent in about 200 thinking I would be safe. Apparently I was wrong... At checkout I had to make payment of $10 for a shipping label which I expected. What I wasn't expecting was that same card to be charged an extra $160 without my consent. When I called to cancel the order and get a refund they just kept repeating that they cannot refund me because services were rendered. So when I asked to speak to a manager I was told they were unavailable. A little later I got a call back from the agent I was speaking to saying that in good faith they will credit me 20%. Which is crap seeing as they withdrew my account so the 20% was just covering my overdraft fee. To someone out of work every little bit counts. I asked to speak to the manager again and of course they were still unavailable. I called back and low and behold still no manager available, how convenient.

To make things worse I received the CD and they claim if you bundle your photos they can make separate folders, which they did but they mixed up the photos in the different folders.

Now it's a month later and I still haven't received my 20%. I called and was told that billing is behind but they will expedite my credit since I called. Funny how billing wasn't behind when it came to charging my card...

Garbage. Absolute garbage. You will pay more than you expect. You will pay A LOT more than you expect. Bought the $300 worth of Groupon. I sent in 188 negatives and 412 pictures. THEY DO NOT TELL YOU THE COST BEFORE PROCESSING! Would you get work done on your car without an estimate only to be told that it was going to be over $1000 and that they will not give you back your property until you pay? Well that's what you can expect if you deal with these scammers. I had a roll of negatives from my wedding along with 8 X 10 originals. It would have cost $0.68 per picture for the 8 X 10s and I saw that the price for negatives was $0.78 per picture. The resolution was going to be much higher so I figured it would be worth the extra $12. I get an email stating that there was a problem with my payment. I figure the credit card info is wrong. Nope. Thankfully, my bank didn't authorize them to charge over $1000! The actually, without any prior notice whatsoever, charged $4.98 per negative! They claim they've never had this problem before (reading the Yelp comments now, I see that's a lie). They will not cancel the order, they will not discount the rate. Their only answer is to allow me to pay the huge bill over time! I expected that my processing fee would be just over the $300 groupon and that I would only have to pay for shipping and a little extra. That's the other thing! They are charging $42 for shipping! UPS charges $12! So, I figure, I'm being ripped off for over $800! IMPORTANT: THEY WILL NOT GIVE YOU BACK YOUR ORIGINAL MATERIAL! They are holding MY stuff ransom!

When group on offered $300 coupons for this company, I convinced my family to buy a number of these to have some old family Super 8 film transferred. I carefully read through the website figured out the price per foot and how many feet we had, and then carefully divided up the films among the various family members to make sure that that each person's film allotment was covered by their groupon and no or at least only perhaps only very small extra charges would apply. We got the digitized products back. I can't believe how terrible they are. Some of them have even been cropped so they are missing some of the picture. They have glowing halos around the people and they are so blurry it is often difficult to make out who is in the picture. The contrast is terrible, many are so dark you can't see anything or so bright the features are washed out. When I contacted Scandigital they said that "several reels had noticeable fading, which would contribute to the quality of the DVD being less than fine" I realize these films are old and I expect them to be grainy but this low quality is not the fault of the film. I took my originals and looked at them through a viewer I have and they are way better than what we were given - and that is an understatement. To add insult to injury, this company has charged our credit cards more money claiming we sent in more feet than we did. Every order had a charge for more feet than we sent in - some as much as 225 feet extra. With each foot costing $. 38 that adds quite a lot to the bill! Two of the orders were charged international shipping even though they were shipped within the states. I have contacted them about one of the extra charges (I just picked up the rest of the parcels today) and they said they would get back to me. That was 3 days ago. I have sent back the first order in hopes they will redo it properly or refund us the money since their website states they guarantee their work. I would total avoid this company. I feel so terrible for convincing my family to be involved in this project and disappointed with groupon for offering deals from a company that obviously has less than a stellar reputation.

Don't trust your slides to this company. If something goes wrong, they don't care enough to fix it.

I rarely write a negative review but in this case it is well warranted. Service from ScanDigital was attrocious start to finish and they did not even give me the courtesy of responding to my letter to them explaining all that went wrong with my order. Alaskans beware! If you don't live in Anchorage, you are in for an even longer wait for your order because they only ship UPS ground - which, contrary to the guarantee on their website, is not trackable in most of Alaska.

To start, took almost 4 months to complete the final of my three of my orders (all sent same day to them: 1 took about two months, 2nd took about 3 months). Despite trying to charge me three separate shipping charges (total of $75), and completing the three orders at vastly different times, they held all three orders until the bitter end and shipped all three together in one box. Total shipping I did end up paying $50, acutal shipping cost for the single box they shipped me $18 (I don't mind paying a fair handling cost but $30 is outrageous and $57 would have been robbery). Repeatedly called them during over the final two month period to find out where my orders were and was repeatedly told they would ship tomorrow. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow...

When I finally received my orders, two out of three were about the quality I expected and I would not be writing this complaint if it weren't for everything else. But the third was complete garbage and is almost completely unusable even for cataloging yet I can't get a refund for the garbage. In fact, I had to manipulate one file so it would even load because it was corrupted off the disk (the scan on that one is half dark/half light). The quality of the bad order is like very poor quality copies from an old photocopier.

It has been almost a month since I sent my letter of complaint and not a word of response. Apparently they don't care which is the worst thing yet.

Image 1: corrupted file
Image 2: very poor scan by SD
Image 3: my scan of same file from years ago on desktop scanner. Much closer in color and everything to original slide.

I purchased a package for 10 videotapes to be converted to digital format for a friend of mine as a gift. I had previously used another company to do another 10 videotapes and they did a great job, and they did it quickly and competitively priced. Buy my friend suggested that she wanted to try this company she had heard about, ScanDigital. So, since these were her tapes and it was my gift to her I said OK and placed the order on 10/04/2020 order# *******. I paid in advance as indicated on the order form and I WAITED.
On 10/19/202 having received NO communication from ScanDigital nor the promised shipping materials that were supposed to be part of the order which I had already paid for. So, I sent them an email asking what was going on with my order.
On 10/20/2020 I got and an email reply from them stating that they did not have my shipping information needed to ship me the materials for shipping the tapes. I immediately replied that all my shipping and mailing information, as well as all my contact information, had been provided on the order form. But I gave it to them again anyway.
On 10/25/2020 I finally received the shipping materials they had promised from the initial order. I immediately packaged the tapes and drove the shipment directly to my UPS shipping point that same day and shipped it out with the preprinted label on it and all the documentation inside the box. Now bear in mind, they have had my money for 24 days and I have had to be the one to initiate all communication regarding this order.
According to UPS ScanDigital received that package on 10/26/2020.
On 10/29/2020 I got another email, "This email is to confirm that we have prepared your materials from Order ******* for processing. Your materials are now in queue for processing, our Essential Tracker System will notify you when the scanning process begins.
We anticipate that your order will be completed and shipped by: 11/26/2020".

On 11/24/2020 having received no tracker information and anticipating the Thanksgiving holiday I sent them another email asking when I should expect the order to be shipped. I got no reply and my order arrived on Friday 11/27/2020

I checked the thumb drive that had the data transfers on it, and it appears to be accurate and I would say the results are adequate. Having said that, the other company was much faster and far more competitively priced. I will never use this company again and cannot recommend it based largely on the fact that they seem to think that once they have your money they are under no obligation to communicate with you unless you initiate that communication.
I was in business for over 45 years and if I had treated my customers in this fashion I would have had a very short-lived career.

Purchased three groupons to try this company. While the website appears to be easy to use, there are several loopholes. 1) They make their shipping label and packing materials sound like something you need to ship your pictures safely to them, while in fact, it is nothing more than a simple box with a small piece of bubble wrap & packing paper (definitely not worth the $20 they charge). 2) The turnaround time to get my pictures back was 6-8 weeks (another vendor turned our pictures around in less than one week). 3) When you are ordering scans from prints, they ask you if you'd like to have 'normal' resolution. Since their price for normal is the same as high def with other vendors, you assume that's what you'll get. Unfortunately, scandigital's normal is low resolution and in fact most of our pictures are blurry if you try to zoom in or crop or use them. 4) Furthermore, scandigital's supervisor- Tracy- actually laughed & was patronizing of me when I was calling to complain and asking for a refund. Instead of politely telling me I should contact groupon for a refund of that portion of what I paid, she acted like I was an idiot for thinking she could refund the monies. Instead, she offered to refund me a portion of what scandigital collected direct from me and only when she was pushed did she say she'd give me a full refund. 5) When you have a problem, this vendor wants to rescan the pictures the same way they did it the first time or make you pay to have an upgraded scan. The other vendor we used automatically scanned low and high resolution pictures at the same price this vendor charges for just 'normal'. While Tracy was willing to rescan the pictures at the 'normal' process, even if they rushed them through, I was looking at two weeks before we'd have them back and then there was no guarantee that they'd be any better than what we got the first time around. Because they were so slow at the forefront in doing the photos, I cannot afford to gamble on letting them make this right, so I am cutting my losses and scrambling to get the same photos scanned elsewhere.