"Careless with my images; left with a mess"

I had a difficult and rather heartbreaking experience with them. I sent many boxes of boxes of scrupulously organized and labeled slides from my grandparents for scanning. Each box labeled by year. They were returned jumbled and the images lacked any organization and the scans didn’t follow any order. It was as if someone had dropped all the slides on the floor and put them back in any which way. I’ve lost weeks of my time returning them to the original order, with no end in sight. Be warned and consider elsewhere if you have large quantities. Very sad experience.

"Don’t trust this firm"

Don’t trust this firm. They should be renamed scamcafe.

After downloading the scans, I found I was being charged an extra $9 something for storage, and that I was automatically subscribed for monthly storage at the same monthly charge. Storage, and a storage fee, were not discussed anywhere during the ordering process. I contacted them about the extra charge, was promised a response within a day, and now, over a week later, I have heard nothing.

"Bad faith by ScanCafe. Not refunding overpayment "

I made the mistake of overestimating the number of photographs that I submitted as well as about 20% of the photos that were scanned were of poor quality. As such, I overpaid. ScanCafe gave me a useless store credit instead of a refund to my credit card even though they said they would refund it to my credit card. Now they are ghosting me and not answering my emails. They have a F rating on the BBB which is not surprising. Run, don't walk from this business. If ScanCafe reads this, take care of your customers

"Scratches and dust specks in the "hand-scanned" product"

ScanCafe scanned a collection of 28 sports team and school class pictures. When they were made available, it was not clear how to view them without paying. This didn’t seem illogical, so we paid the difference. I waited a few days to download the photos and they sent back the originals. When I did go to view the scans, I discovered that most of them had very obvious scratches and speckles similar to when someone uses a dusty scanner.

Their website states that "Each of your images will be reviewed and corrected as needed, one at a time, by an assigned technician” This is a lie. Had any individual looked at the scans they would have immediately noticed the errors. This is not a quibble about color correction which could differ depending on the individual. If I can, I will attach sections that show the artifacts.

I was eventually connected with Gonzalo Anza whose title is Customer Experience Manager. I asked about the promise to review every photo and he stated that they were reviewed but the techs may not have focused on my issues. I asked for my money back and he refused stating that they don’t refund for “completed” jobs. The job was less than $30. I told him the job of executing a clean scan was definitely not “completed”. At no point would Mr. Anza or anybody at the company take responsibility and say “we screwed up and this is embarrassing that this is the product we put out” or something similar. They surely know it and I don’t understand why they are so concerned with not admitting their error. I asked to talk with an owner or someone above Mr. Anza who would understand and was told he was my last resort. What Mr. Anza offered was to rescan the photos which would have required me to send them across country again. What was the point of taking that risk when there was no reason to believe ScanCafe was capable of succeeding? I do not trust them with my photos.

I set about figuring out how to stop the CC charge but decided to wait a couple days in case Mr. Anza changed his mind. ScanCafe proceeded to touch up all the damaged scans passably. The originals are still much more vibrant than the scans. They did leave one swimming pool green (even after knowing they were correcting a past error they couldn’t figure this out) which I discovered because I had to meticulously check each new photo against the original. We went through the process again and they fixed that.

At this point, ScanCafe has achieved the state of me not needing to stop the CC charge. That’s it. Their motto could be “we do our job so poorly that you’ll have to fight with us just to do it OK until you get tired and don’t stop the CC charge” I scanned many items with them in the past when they were a startup and the photos went to India to scan. Whatever has changed, I will have nothing to do with them anymore.

"They now charge to remove scratches"

One of the things I liked about scancafe was that they removed scratches when they scanned.
now they charge to "restore" the image unless you get the value pack.

I do like being able to not get scans.
I go through my print pictures before selecting the ones to scan but there were still pics that were very similar or just not very good.
it was nice to not have to get them

"Some what pleased"

I thought they would be able to fix some slides that had water damage. They did not.

"Big Project? No problem."

Big, difficult project to convert tons of old-school slides to digital format done very well and at a reasonable cost.

"Huge money grab for terrible quality and extremely rude customer service…"

A money grab for terrible quality and insulting customer service: I prepaid for 139 pictures in an heirloom photo album I mailed that was damaged when my house flooded. In addition I paid an additional $9.95 fee. I was told that this fee was for taking the photos out and scanning them individually. Then I was charged $19 for a USB drive I never received, and $18 for express shipping I couldn't opt out of. When I got the email that the pictures were ready, they had scanned the whole album pages as one photo instead of scanning each photo!! A total of 41 pages. The quality of the scans was dreadful! No attempts to straighten a page, let alone any touch ups. I was given a gift card for the around $25 for the difference, not refund of course for the photo album fee or the USB drive I didn't receive. When I contacted customer support my concerns were dismissed with empty claims of "your images were handled with utmost care and respect", my explanation of how important this album was for me was ignored and my frustration of the low quality of the scans was blamed on me! What? "You should have said something during the review process." Well, it was never clear that such a process existed and perhaps a word of sympathy would have been a wiser choice that the school master attitude. I requested that at least the gift card be sent back as a real refund. No, they couldn't do that. When I politely expressed my frustration with this I was told, "I'd recommend we take a moment to compose ourselves"! Excuse me?? I am not a school girl, sir! Trying to make lemonade from lemons I later tried to use the gift card to get printouts of the album pages. You guessed it, gift cards can only be used to have more images scanned. No way am I ever sending you any more of my pictures, Scan Cafe!

"best value"

ScanCafe has been digitizing all of my media for years. They are reliable and the best value for the money (cost and quality).

"Very disappointed in ScanCafe"

Very disappointed in ScanCafe. I sent ScanCafe 27 slides of irreplaceable content that I received when my mother passed away recently. I was so anxious in having them converted and sharing with other family members, but, somehow my slides ended up in the Fisher, IN landfill. ScanCafe talks about the security of your slides during every step of the process. Each step of the process is videotaped, but, somehow my 27, irreplaceable slides now reside somewhere in the Fisher, IN landfill. Totally unacceptable that they even left the facility! I asked for a small written narrative after I spoke to them. I was very upset and angry when the marketing woman explained to me exactly how it happened. Another senior level guy told me that my case had already generated many changes, but, I found a review someone wrote 2 years ago with the same issues I had. I can tell you about the claim on their website that says something to the effect of "we offer a $1,000 guarantee that you will NEVER need if we lose your slides", guess what, I got the $1,000 guarantee that they tell you that you will NEVER need.