ScanDigital Photo ScanningReviews 54

If you are expecting a reasonable time frame for your scanning, this is NOT the company for you. The total time from when I placed my order until I actually saw my transfers online was 36 days. It was another two weeks before my originals were returned.

The only reason my order was processed this "fast" was because I constantly hounded them about their terrible service after weeks with no communication. Early on they sent me a notice stating "We are now digitizing your items" - which turns out was a complete lie.

Finally found someone who was honest, and their response about the long delay in processing my order was: "We are now digitizing your items means that your order is in the process of being digitized but may not reach a technician automatically. Unfortunately, we are short-staffed at the moment, hence the delay in getting your order processed through to completion." Say what?

Then, after weeks of delays, they held up my order for a bogus additional payment, when in fact they actually owed me money. It took them days to resolve this internal IT problem, but in the meantime they refused to release my order. Days later, they released the transfers and refunded me $37.71 with no apology for all the delays.

Never again will I use them. I had high stress the whole time they were in possession of my priceless videos. It took days for them to respond to my messages which stressed me even more.

In retrospect, I believe the reason they are always discounting everything is that they have positioned themselves as the low price leader and not a quality, reputable resource for your irreplaceable memories. Taking this risk is similar to looking for a low priced brain surgeon.

BUYER BEWARE!

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!

I am a 40+ year professional graphic designer/photographer. So I have seen some bad scans in my time. None worse than the ones recently done by ScanDigital. All scanned out of focus, wrong way round. A total mess. Only good thing was they returned my slides to me.

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.

I sent in tapes to be converted to DVDs. They sent back a thumb drive which was mostly unwatchable. Some of the files had music dubbed instead of the actual audio. I called and the service rep said they never dub music. I have proof that they did. My tapes still have the original audio and NO music. I sent the tapes back for a second try. Dumb move. Watching their second converted video I apparently have someone else's file stuck in the middle of mine. None of our family in it but a lot of people that I don't know. How do I know where my videos may have gone?

Either scan them at home or take your photos to Kodak kiosk. You can enhance your photos with the most basic photo editor.

They claimed to:

Summary
Step 1: Place Your Order
No need to count or sort.
Generate a UPS Label from our site.
Ship your materials and track everything using our Essential Tracker.

Step 2: We Scan & Review
We provide the highest quality.
We crop, rotate and color correct all images.
We remove dust and minor blemishes.

Step 3: We Return Your Originals & a Digital Copy
You receive a lifetime of memories on an external USB Drive preserved forever.

ALL INCORRECT. MY REVIEW TO THEM:
I, most likely, will not recommend your services to anyone as your claims, "HOW IT WORKS", is utter nonsense.

The digital photos included on my thumb drives looked identical to the original photos.

My understanding was you would clean, correct and modify any blemishes.

What you did... I could have done. And, in fact, I have already corrected blemishes, scratches, colors and clarity on most of the photos.

I had such good hopes of your abilities and ethics (as described in, How it works).

Your shipping practices are accurate.

BELOW IS MY RESPONSE TO THEIR FINAL REPLY:
There was no customer service response other than to say 'we will do better on your next order'.

Seriously? I wasted every bit of money paid to you. I could have scanned them myself and performed better optimization.

Consumers, please save your money.

I simply cannot believe how SLOW these people are! I sent in a negative strip with 3 exposures on it back in 2/15 it was received, real simple order, scan, send me a CD, that's it and here I am 3/15- FOUR WEEKS later and the progress on this has gotten only to the FIRST quality check! I've emailed them twice asking WHEN this will be completed because a client ordered a copy licensed for their in-house project and paid me for it back in FEBRUARY, and they have been asking about this several times now.
I'm looking now at having to refund their money because this has taken so damn long it's beyond ridiculous. Both time they replied to my email they said they were extremely backlogged with orders from JANUARY!

My advice is find someone else, I'm not sending these people the 8mm films and other stuff I WAS going to.

I am completely disappointed and utterly frustrated. I sent in 19 mini VHS tapes to be transferred to CDs and an external drive (it took 2 months). What I received were awful. Most had video calibration on them with white noise and couldnt be watched. I sent them back for a re-do. When I received the new CDs and external drive (after yet another 2 months) the white noise and video calibration were gone but the sound kept going out. When the sound WAS on, it wasnt in sync with with the video. Its so frustrating to watch someones lips moving and their voice is somewhere else. I sent in my Groupon receipt and credit card charge receipt and asked for a refund of those charges. I felt another re-do at this point was ridiculous. They sent a reply that theyd look into it. That was over a month ago. So this has been almost SIX months of frustration. I emailed them AGAIN asking what the delay was and received a generic email saying I needed to reopen and reply to the request number. Aaarrggghhh! I just sent in another email stating my frustration and asked again for the refund. Who knows what kind of response Ill get. So Im resorting to this negative review. I dont like writing them but I feel this one is deserved. Oh, and Im never using Groupon again either. I think the value v/s quality simply isnt worth it.

I sent them 20 small reel Super 8 films to be made into a CD. First I am charged $37.90. A week later I am charged $252.80! For 20 films. Then to top it off 10 days later I am charged another $63.20. I never received prior notice of these charges. Lord knows, if I knew I would be charged $252.80 for this service I'd of had a friend come over with his Camcorder and film them while I run them on the projector and had them send my films back to me. So each film transferred to DVD cost me $17.69 per 3 minute film. I urge everyone to shop around. These fees are exhorbitant. I will never use this company again. Plus I got the old run around email back when I sent them a email telling them I thought there charges were much to high. Never again will I use ScanDigital.

I sent them my VHS tapes to convert (using a groupon deal) and they charged $160 more WITHOUT my consent. (Had my credit card on file). When I called they were extremely rude. Still waiting for a manager and I'm out $160!
And the quality of the DVDs was TERRIBLE!

They received my tapes and did nothing for more than 2 weeks. When I questioned customer service about it, I got some nonsense about how they had to secure (?) my tapes. When I complained about the fact that they were taking too long to even process my tapes, the response was to say "we clearly state it could take so many (don't remember the number) of weeks to process your order'. Well, it's the LAST time ScanDigital gets any business from me. And for all the time they took, the finished product was NOTHING special. Next time I'll use Southtree!

I spent $700 to get my films and pictures on a DVD and it looks terrible. I called and they refuse to do anything to fix it. I didn't even get my pictures on a DVD which of course they said they would send to me. They didn't fix any of the old films to look better so the pictures probably look awful too. They are terrible with customer service and don't care to help you out in any way. They got their money and don't care. And to top it off it took over 4 months to get the stupid, worthless DVD. Worthless Company!

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.

Used a groupon as others have. Quality was really bad. Film was about 45 years old so I didn't expect perfection, but much of it was so black I couldn't even identify who was in it. I think I could do better myself at no cost since I still have the projector, but wanted to save time. I ordered it 6/23 and received it 8/3. I feel as though I have thrown $300 away. Very disappointed. After reading reviews I see there is no sense in complaining to the company. They already have my money. Please don't make the same mistake I made. Read the reviews. I'm back to where I was, doing them myself.

Do not use this service. Waited a long time to have my order come back incorrect (same 2 hours of video recorded over and over on 2 discs - 4 hours never copied), and I was over charged. The customer service rep initially tried to tell me what happened was impossible. Told me I could get a refund, then the next email said no refund. I agreed to have them redo it, since they would not offer a refund, and that took forever again, with no correspondence about the status of my redo. Redo quality was bad... skipping video that was not happening on original VHS. Had to email them in detail about the overcharge, and email them 3 times to get an response. They finally admitted to overcharging me (which I told them at the start of this episode) and and refunded me. They pretended to be customer service oriented, but there is NO quality control or satisfaction guaranteed as stated all over their website. DO NOT USE!

What a terribly run company! Extremely expensive and slow. It took soooo many months to get my order processed. I had to call several times just to get them to do anything. Then I got my order and it was wrong. I had to send everything back and have them do it again. Many months and phone calls later, I get my order again. And one of my VHS tapes was damaged beyond repair. I called to complain but no one cared. Horrible, horrible, horrible company. Go anywhere else.