Southtree

Where to start! I guess from the beginning. I have always known about all sorts of media transfer places, but just was not comfortable sending all my VHS tapes for fear of them being lost in the mail, but upon recommendation from some close friends for Southtree, I took the plunge and sent just a few at first.
I was extremely impressed with the whole process that Southtree has in place from the moment they receive your media to increments of the process. I was so comforted knowing what was going on throughout the whole process, and upon receiving my new DVDs, it is a blessing beyond belief at how inexpensive it was to turn memories onto DVDs that can be easily watched any day and that are preserved that much longer than my old VHS tapes of which were 21 years old! I definitely recommend Southtree for any media service. They are always emailing coupons and discounts all the time so make it very affordable and you don't miss a good sale if you decided not to act on the most recent discount, they are great group of people there in Chattanooga that really understand how to do this type of job well and bless families.

UNBELIEVABLE! I ordered a transfer of a VHS tape to CD and it has taken 2 times to get it done but unusable. Unfortunately, the first time the CD came to me with scratches and finger prints on the data side - exactly what they tell me to avoid in an insert with the CD. I sent it back for reprocessing. This time I get a label stuck to my VHS tape storage box saying " Sorry... but there are permanent tracking issues due to damage or age". I find the tape storage box was damaged while in their possession. The damage is extremely hard to do since the tape storage box is made of heavy plastic. No one said or indicated any problem of this type existed during the first processing. I sent the VHS tape back to them the second time in the same packaging it was sent to me. No one indicated the package was damaged when it was returned to them so, it had to be badly handled and damaged during the second processing.

I gave them a perfectly good unused tape for processing and they ruined it. Totally unprofessional and irresponsible. They lack all capability to do a simple task. LOSERS!

Just received my first order from Southtree. Sadly, it will be the last. The quality of the product did not come close to meeting the hype mentioned on the website.

My order was small - the digital scanning of fifty 35mm color slide transparencies. I figured that if the order turned out well, i would send in about 250 more. The website indicated my order would be processed by a skilled "technician" who would carefully scan and optimize each slide. Apparently the term "technician" is used loosely at Southtree.

The quality of the scanning work was seriously substandard. Some of the images that were sharply focused on the slide were seriously blurred - some to the point of being worthless. In some instances, focus was inconsistent on the same slide. Other slides were scanned backwards-something that would be obvious to a "technician" who was actually checking his/her work as each image was scanned.

The most serious deficiency was dust contamination. The slides that were returned to me were obviously cleaned of dust at some point. So it is unclear to me why there were so many dust spots on the finished scan files. Either the slides were cleaned AFTER the scan, or the scanning equipment, itself was contaminated. Many scanner manufacturers offer software that will mitigate much of the problem with dust spots. Southtree apparently doesn't offer this.

Quality of Work - POOR
Speed - POOR (It took two months to process the order)
Communication - OKAY (emails were sent to advise processing steps)
Recommendation to others - Find another vendor!

First LegacyBox delivered my "memories" a month late. When I opened up the thumb drive I discovered that it was another family's digitized movies. When I called LegacyBox to inquire about what happened, they customer service rep was pathetic. LegacyBox had no record of where my thumb drive of my digitized movies had gone, and worse yet, no concern or acknowledgement that they had breached my and this other customer's privacy. I had to push for a reimbursement and for them to process my original order, it took the barely educated customer rep to do so. To add insult to injury, LegacyBox has still not A) delivered my original order and B) explained what happened. DO NOT INTRUST LEGACYBOX WITH ANY IMPORTANT CONTENT.

Let me skip to the punchline. I would not use Southtree again if the fate of the free world depended on it.

The entire process was agonizing. Every single step took forever. They kept my negatives for nearly three months. I just wanted some 35mm negatives scanned. Simple, right?

Well, after months of glacial progress, I got this enigmatic email from them saying that because my negatives were sent in negative sleeves, they were unable to process them. They also said that they would be happy to issue me a credit. Are you serious?

They never once suggested that sending negatives in negative sleeves would be a problem. And in fact, no one should ever remove photographic negatives from their sleeves unless they are being processed. They are too fragile. If I had just put them into a ziplock bag, which is apparently what the wanted, the negatives would have been scratched and damaged.

It is especially curious that one step in the process was for them to examine what I sent them to insure that they were acceptable. At that point, which was about a month into the process, they said that everything was fine.

So I basically just gave them $48 for nothing. They also wasted three months of my time. I still need the scans. I will use someone local. Southtree is a scam.

I had old cassettes from the 70's -90's with NO market value but priceless sentimental value... I sent them to Southtree - afraid of what might happen but I was SO HAPPY with the results... I cried all the way through the "reunions" - I hope to find more to send them soon - GREAT customer service all the way through the process and WONDERFUL results! I am still swooning!

I saw the ad pop up on Facebook. It sparked my interest and made me start thinking about changing the format of the Hi8 videos that I have detailing special events in my family for the last 17 years. I was hesitant about sending the precious memories through the mail, but I needed to do it because the tapes were starting to show degradation. I checked quite a few local places and the costs were incredible. I kept sitting on the fence and finally decided to do it. I received an email with 45% off processing that I could not pass up. I packaged the 41 - Hi8 tapes I have and padded them up in the box. I followed the instructions that I received from Southtree for shipping my precious cargo and handed them over to the people at UPS. I am not going to lie when I tell you how worried I was. I thought about it all night after I dropped them off. The next day, I received notification from UPS and Southtree that my memories had arrived and I was kept updated by Southtree through the whole process. The turnaround was pretty short and I received a quality product copied over to DVD format. I opted for the thumb drive, and I cannot tell you how great it is to have 17 years of memories available to me on just one thumb drive. The quality of the DVDs is great and I have been reviewing the files on the thumb drive for days. Great job to Southtree! Highly recommend them to everyone.

I used Southtree a few years back for digitizing home movies and recently sent off 4,000 pictures to be scanned (4 orders). The process is easy and the communication is great with regular updates along the way. The scan resolution is not as high as other sites but it is fine and you don't have crazy file size to deal with. We had two issues:
1) We went through every picture we sent in so we could tag the photos with comments written on the back of the originals. Of the 4,000 pictures sent in we had about 40-50 that didn't get scanned. They were not marked in anyway and we wouldn't have known if we hadn't checked them. Most were small wallet-sized photos so that could be part of it. We just scanned those ourselves.
2) We had about 200 negatives that we sent in that they didn't scan. That's fine and they tagged those saying to contact them if we wanted to submit something else in their place. I contacted customer support and they said that we could add them to our next order. The issue was I didn't have a next order to place. Ultimately I found a couple folders of pics and placed another order and they will give us credit on the extra items we include with this order. Not really an elegant solution but it works.

Overall, the price is good and the process is convenient. Just hope that all goes smooth for your order or you'll have a little work to do to straighten it out.

The good news is I sent 4 reels of film to Southtree and they converted the film to DVD. There is nothing special about the quality of the conversion, some of the film on DVD is jumpy and contains lighting problems. Although I sent names for each of the films and expected them to use the titles for each reel, they converted all the reels together into one 53 minute DVD
I mailed the film on 8/25/13 and received the DVD on 11/16/13.
Per post office tracking they received the package on August 31 2013. Southtree said it was delivered on Sept 10. Southtree appeared to make up bogus steps so I would think they were doing something. Here are all the steps they sent via email'

Shipped Oct 29

Final Review Oct 13

Digitizing Film Oct 11

Production Queue Oct 1

Reviewed Sep 20

Barcoded Sep 14

Delivered Sep 10

Order Confirmation Aug 27