Southtree

IT TOOKS MONTHS. IT TOOK MANY EMAILS. QUALITY WAS UNUSABLE.

BUT, THE WORST PART, 1/3 OF MY VIDEOS THAT THEY TRANSFERRED WERE NOT MINE.

THEY LOST MY VALUABLE TAPES. DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT SEND THEM YOUR PRECIOUS MEMORIES. THIS IS THE WORST COMPANY I HAVE EVER USED.

I HAVE HAD SOME OF THE SAME VIDEOS TRANSFERRED BEFORE SO I GOT TO SEE WHAT THEY SENT, VS WHAT I ALREADY HAD. HORRIFIC QUALITY. SHODDY.

BUT, LOSING MY VIDEOS? YOU SHOULD BE RUN OUT OF TOWN.

I AM LIVID! I AM ALSO SEEKING REMEDIES TO BE MADE WHOLE.

IF THEY ARE READING THIS,...

THEN YOU HAD BEST FIND MY TAPES!

THIS IS A WARNING!

IT IS ALSO A WARNING TO OTHERS.

DO NOT TRUST THIS COMPANY, AND DEAR GOD, DO NOT SEND THEM YOUR VIDEOS, UNLESS YOU ARE WILLING TO LOSE THEM.

Don't send them your originals if you don't want to lose them.

I sent them my original cassettes (2) of my grandparents who have passed away. They did a terrible job of converting them. I could barely hear the voices. When I contacted them back, they asked me to send those back so that they could rework it. I did.

I received a notice on Dec. 21st, 2022 confirming that they had received the return.

Then I received another notice on Dec. 27th, 2022 to let me know that they were finished working on them. It said nothing about when it will be coming back to me.

Since then I have contacted them multiple times, via emails and phone. However there has been no response. The website doesn't offer a way to contact them. They are not replying to the multiple emails I have sent. And they don't answer the phone. They just keep playing music. It has been playing for past 30 minutes!

Do not send them your beloved media that you don't want to part with. You may never get them back.

Here's the email from Dec. 21st, 2022:
Southtree ORDER #*******
Hi Sandhia,

Your return has been received here at Southtree and assigned to a lead technician. Our lead technician will review your order and make the requested corrections!

We're giving your order the VIP treatment by providing expedited processing. This means you order should be here no longer than 1-2 weeks. We'll be sure to let you know once your return has been completed!

Thank you again for choosing Southtree!

Here's the one from Dec. 27Th:

Southtree ORDER #*******
Hi Sandhia,

We wanted to give you a heads up that one or more of your items had some pre-existing quality issues that arose in conversion. We still converted it, doing everything we could to ensure the highest possible quality transfer. However, given your media's original quality, the transfer isn't great and doesn't meet our normal quality standard. We've found that our customers still want the digital transfer and prefer we capture the footage, even if it's poor quality.

Please be aware, this company LOST a priceless 8mm film that I sent to them to be converted to digital format. Do not trust them with your irreplaceable memories.

I purchased a deal from Living Social for a 3-item LegacyBox conversion kit (This company Southtree operates "LegacyBox" just in case this wasn't clear from previous reviews). Despite their 'intricate' tracking system that they boast about, one 8mm film that I sent in was never logged into their system. Upon receiving an email that only 2 of my 3 items were logged in, I emailed them immediately. Customer service suggested that I sent in an incompatible film format. As I informed them that this was not the case, my order was supposed to be reviewed before it was shipped back to me. It was not reviewed, but instead simply shipped back and only 2 of the 3 items I sent in were returned to me. I have been in contact with the customer service manager numerous times, who cannot give me any kind of detail about my case but only keeps answering that there is an 'open investigation' into locating my item. It has been over two months and if my film has not been found by now I have little faith that it will ever be located.

Just to be clear, I packed the three items to be converted myself and sent them in the box that was sent to me by LegacyBox. This was not a postal service error, it was an error on their part. I wish I had read these reviews before I chose to send these films in to be transferred, as I see that I am not the only one to have their items lost.

Yep, pretty awful. After many weeks or months of waiting and praying, you will receive SOMETHING back. Sometimes I get a sense that the reviews on sites like this are overwhelmingly negative because only the pissed off customers post something; the satisfied customers never speak up. In this case, I think maybe all their customers are upset. That's why they're always on Groupon; they'd never sell their services by word of mouth otherwise.

I made the mistake of buying a second set of Groupons before receiving back my first set of slide scanning orders. I think the second set actually came back worse than the first. They were not completely out of order like my first set, but instead of vertical photos being scanned properly, they were now letterboxed left and right and cut off top and bottom - almost like they switched scanning equipment or something.

After going through the files and finding this, I spoke up. They sent me a return form and I carefully packaged everything back up for rescanning and shipped it off on my dime. Everything came back lumped together on one CD this time... with the vertical scans looking exactly the same as before. Oh, and they e-mailed me a coupon for some hypothetical time when I'd want to use their services again.

I sent my two tapes to Southtree in the beginning of February and now end of May and I did not received it back. It looks like the company is absolutely unresponsible.

After looking around online at several different video transfer places, I went with Southtree due to their snazzy website which promised great service and good prices. Uh oh - let the fun begin.

Sent Southtree 15 old video tapes in Oct. 2012 to have them put on DVD's. I was so excited to give them as Christmas gifts & after years of procrastinating, I was finally getting this done! Long story short - Southtree messed up my simple order again & again from the beginning. Fast forward to SIX months later and finally in March 2013, Southtree shipped my complete order. Happy day, right?!?! Nope. Turns out Southtree sent the package without a complete address label - AND used cheap shipping without tracking to the door. To this day, my package remains lost and I have zero DVD's and one of my original videotapes was lost in the mess. Not to mention - my money wasn't refunded until I filed a credit card dispute.

CONCLUSION - I wouldn't recommend Southtree in a million years. Their right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing & they were unbelievably careless with my videotapes. I was more than patient with Southtree for the first many months - but my experience with Southtree was a complete train wreck. Soooo, save yourself some grief - you'd be much better off to buy a machine and do it yourself - or take your tapes to a reputable local video transfer service.

I originally only sent 5 VHS' to be converted to DVDs to be sure I would be happy with the result and also I was a bit skeptical as to whether or not my VHS' would have gotten lost. Upon receiving my tapes Southtree contacted me immediately to let me know they received them. They continually updated me as to the status (where my tapes were in production). When I received them, I sat and watched all five in one day. The one that was originally from my parents' Super*8 was from 1947 through 1979. I laughed, cried and applauded as I got to see everyone so vividly, so happy; lost so many years ago to me. I immediately sent the next 11 VHS tapes to Southtree and I have been kept up to date on a regular basis as to where they are in production. Southtree THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR GIVING ME BACK MY MEMORIES!
Joan Steever - Morristown NJ

Used Southtree to convert old video camera tapes. I paid for the "digital download" option. I waited months and months for tapes to be converted. When I finally received the email that my download was ready, there was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING indicating that the download link would ever expire. Photos attached! I had a baby around this time and forgot to download them right away.

Fast-forward about a year later, I finally got to the bottom of my to-do list and went to download my videos. They were gone. After going back and forth with customer service a number of times, I find out that I can pay $20 for a "Legacybox" subscription, THEN ALSO PAY another $20 for my download link to be resent. I go through this entire charade, am out another $40+, and STILL do not receive a download link. Sidenote---the Legacybox fee is an annual subscription service, so I will then have to go through the legwork of CANCELLING this service once I finally get my files.

Next comes ongoing phone tag with customer service reps as I cannot get a clear answer on how to actually access my files. The amount of time and money I have spent on this is 100% not worth it. Stay far away from this service.

For the record, there is a note on the Southtree website when first choosing the "download link option" for file delivery, stating that the link will be active for "30 days." But, that is never stated again anywhere on any materials I received. Then, the customer service rep I spoke to told me the link is active for "60 days." I honestly would not be angry about the expired link if the expiration time had been CLEARLY STATED in my digital download email.

I would not recommend Southtree. The service was slow, I sent my negatives and one movie reel back around the first part of February. I called several times inquiring "How much longer?" They were good about getting back with me I have to say that much for them, but it was always the same story, we got swamped and are running behind a little. I finally received them the end of May. I wish I could say I was happy with them, the reel played with everyone upside down which I had them send me a new one corrected and the negatives were very disappointing. During this time span I had bought a CanoScan 8400F Color Image Scanner on ebay and scanned the actual picture, it also came with trays for negatives but was intimidated when I first got it and thought they could do a more professional job with negatives that I would. I was wrong. I then freshened up the pictures with VueScan software. It did a better job restoring the picture than they did with the negatives. I even had them in order with music playing in the background. I would not recommend anyone waste their money on Southtree, even with the Groupon coupon I paid to much for what I got!

While the work was adequate, their information is terrible. I had Super 8 movies that I wanted on dvd. I never imagined that they wouldn't add the sound! It was only after I got the dvd and found no sound that I went searching on the help site. They answer one question "Can you capture sound from film?" Since I KNOW you can I never read that question. Shame on me. Here's their answer:
Sound on film reels are rare and at this time, we are no longer able to process the audio line with film reels. Less than 1% of film reels had a sound line, even fewer movie cameras recorded on this line, and at this time we are no longer able to source a film unit from our vendors that can digitize this part. We are able to digitize film reels and create great video files for you to enjoy.
If I had seen this I never would have used this company and would have gone to one of the MANY companies that do digitize the sound. I will now have to purchase the same service from a competent company and be forced to pay for the service twice. This is not good business!

We have thousands of old photos; many great ones and many that are not as important. I was looking for a reasonably priced service that could simply scan in a lot of pictures and give me the JPGs back. Southtree popped on to my radar with a special offer for 1,000 pictures that couldn't be beat so I thought I try it. After making my purchase I received a very impressive kit that you use to organize your items into groups of 25 (in the case of photos) with bar coded stickers I applied to zip lock bags I provided. Southtree provided the shipping box and label; all I had to do was pack up my 40 baggies of pictures and ship them off. They provided high quality documentation and the materials were all first class.

I will say the service takes a while, but I wasn't in a hurry and had no deadline. From the time I shipped my photo until they were scanned, was about 2.5 months. More specifically, my pictures arrived there on 11/17/21 and on 2/10/22 they were ready to be downloaded. That is fine with me - these are pictures that I've had for many years so I wasn't in a hurry. Southtree does a nice job of keeping you informed along the way as your items work their way through the process. In the end I received 2 zip files with all of my pictures. It was super-easy and the quality was everything I expected. I will be batching up more pictures to send them as I work my way through this process. Great job, Southtree!

They had a sale on fb for developing tapes, any tapes, for $5. I didn't notice the dates of the sale and 2 days later when they finally replied to me that my 8mm tapes were included, in my excitement I put my order in. The invoice that I paid, which came from them, stated that I owed 54.95.
they let me know when they received my order and also sent me progress reports. So far, so good. I was beyond excited... some of my tapes were 50 years old.
towards the end of the process, I get an email, telling me there was a balance of over $100. What? I paid the invoice that THEY created. The agent then tells me (with a flippant attitude) that he'll make a deal with me and only charge me half of that. I told them to send my tapes back to me or honor their invoice. They refused and my tapes arrived back home today.
its the principle of the whole thing. It was their mistake, I'm sure the whole transaction was nearly completed. Why they couldn't just eat their mistake is beyond me. Not very good business sense. I wouldn't recommend this company. Not very ethical.

I responded to a facebook post with a "deal" about getting videotapes transferred to disk.

Gather a bunch of ten to send in at Christmas and shipped... got confirmation on January 2nd that they had been received, then another update and then an update on January 25th that my items were being "sorted"... and then the updates stopped and I contacted via chat today Southtree (because they were not taking customer phone calls) to get an update since it has been over two months. I was first told that my videotapes had been converted and were being uploaded to thumb drives. Ay nd we went back and forth and I was told that the original estimate of 6-8 weeks is just that an estimate and that they would see what they could do to get me out of production sooner. And that there was an update posted to my account yesterday (but I got no email)... with a status. I have no idea when I will be getting my items but I feel like I have just gotten a heapload of bs... here's hoping that the quality is at least reasonable. I'm feeling really dumb for having trusted this vendor!