ScanCafe

What can you say about a business that loses valuable family memories, and their customer service barely lifts a finger to help track - or provide transparent information about what's going on or what happened.

ScanCafe has been a real nightmare from the start of the process to get digital images of irreplaceable family shots - including their lack of effort on tracking down slides lost while under their control. Customer service was obviously understaffed (pandemic-related?), and didn't really care that thousands of pictures could go missing under their watch. I spent weeks putting together the package of media to send in, and used their shipping service. I couldn't get information from the shipper on what happened because it was ScanCafe's paperwork /"ownership" that was used. And the company dragged their feet for so long on informing me with what was going on, the chances of recouping these items became impossible. Unfortunately, what was supposed to be an enjoyable and rewarding experience is going to turn into legal mess that I didn't need during a pandemic.

I am not using this company again. They neglected to scan 12% of the negative packets, but returned the USB as if the job was done. If you use them: check carefully. They even lost a packet of negatives. Was a whole hassle to straighten it all out. You are trusting them to scan each and every negative, but it will never know if the scan-person got tired and just skipped a few. In my case, many folders were missing on the USB stick. This is, my opinion, a company with a quality control problem. I will not use them again.

I mailed them a book of tapes. Of the 22 double sided tapes, all of which were clear tapes of a speaker at a conference. The ScanCafe copies had poor quality audio on 14 tapes so that I could not hear what was being said. I had to listen to all the original tapes I provided in order to identify which of their recordings they made were faulty. This is a waste of my time. And this happened before.
When I asked for a refund, they refuse. They also want to charge me to redo their faulty recording! I prepaid for another order not yet shipped, and they refuse to refund my money on unused services. I can't trust their quality of service for audio tapes

Based on some initial positive online reviews, I ordered a kit from this company last year to send in some negatives for scanning. I pre-paid ($300+) for the service. But weeks after they told me they would be sending out their mail-in kit I never received anything. When I contacted them they had no explanation, and no tracking. They said (vaguely) that it must have been lost in the mail. This certainly did not inspire my confidence in sending them my original negatives. So I decided to cancel the order and seek scanning elsewhere.

I contacted them in writing multiple times to tell them I wanted to cancel the order and to issue a credit. There was nothing equivocal about my requests. But all I got was an endless loop of them asking me why and then trying to manage my objections. When I lost patience with dealing with so-called customer service reps who were ignoring my requests, and seemed more akin to smarmy used car salesmen, I decided it would be a better use of my time to contact American Express for a charge back as Scan Cafe seemed disinterested in returning my money for the service they completely failed to deliver. So after several weeks, American Express issued the credit and I thought I would be able to move on.

Well wasn't I surprised then – at year end when I was going over my charge transactions for my taxes – to see that, months after the charge back, Scan Cafe took it upon themselves to charge my credit card again without my authorization. Not only is a mystery to me why any company would think they were entitled to take money when no service was delivered, but this act was borderline criminal.

Because of the delay in discovering the unauthorized charge (on a heavily used card with a lot of other charges) It took me almost a YEAR to resolve this. I insisted that American Express re-open the investigation into this inappropriate charge and yet Scan Cafe falsely representing to Amex that I had received their service. So the Amex said their hands were tied as: Scan Cafe is our customer too."

Scan Cafe was saying something quite different to me directly. That they had already issued a refund for my original charge. In fact, it was Amex that issued the refund (chargeback). But Scan Cafe had actually made that additional charge, the first when I initially ordered the service and another after the chargeback. So I eventually had to submit to Scan Cafe my entire Amex credit card detail to show them the clear evidence and math before they eventually (after MANY e-mails) agreed to issue a credit.

In a lifetime of online commerce this was a nightmare of a time and energy suck and hands down one of the worst consumer experiences I have ever had. In even decided to close my Amex Platinum card over this experience as the credit card company handled the matter exceedingly poorly. Hopefully I can save someone else a similar hassle by posting this.

Update: On top of all of the above, wouldn't you know that Scan Cafe retained my personal information and spontaneously started sending me unsolicited marketing e-mails YEARS after the horrible experience of not delivering any service, refusing a refund and then charging my credit card again without authorization. Wow. Just wow. Unprofessional, creepy, incompetent. Scan Cafe will make you run out of adjectives for how galactically horrid they are.

Update2: Take note of the RAVE reviews being posted here for Scan Cafe. They are vague and unspecific and are by posters who have no other reviews. They so clearly seem like shill reviews and it is disheartening that Scan Cafe isn't better at removing them. In my experience, the management of Scan Cafe is not only comfortable taking my money for a service they did not provide, and charging my credit car without authorization, but it apparently they are not above posting shill reviews as opposed to actually correcting the REAL problems they are having with their business. Scan Cafe is a shade fest.

I sent thousands of pictures, organized by topic and ordered in a way that I would help tell a story to my family. All I have now are random pictures on CDs in these cases that are so slippery that, if they fall behind a large piece of furniture, I don't even bother to retrieve them.

The most important element to diversify different services is to trust their claims. Like air blowing the slides to remove dust particles that leave black marks on the images. I sent over 1000 slides to Scan Cafe and they cost 0ver $500. The slides were filled with black marks from dust. I know they didn't air blow before processing. So disappointing.

I had them scan ~1600 slides a year or two ago. I am now organizing the scans and finding that 4-5 slides per hundred were simply skipped. I recommend sending only small orders. Quality not terrific, resolution not as good as when projected on a slide projection screen, and some are dark but am able to fix (lighten) in lightroom.

Contracted to digitize several cassette audio tapes. First attempt, audio was not recorded. Second attempt, audio was garbled. Third attempt portions of audio were missing. Refused to refund money. Had to stop payment with credit card company.

We've done business with this company for many years, but something has changed and it's not for the better. I order $575 in gift cards for my wife to complete our family photo project of transfering about 1700 pictures to a digital format. Of this number we needed around 18 photos to be restored. They sent a quote and a bill. When I referenced the credit I was told it could not be used. There was nothing in their gift card page that said anything about restrictions or limitations but according to them this was another process entirely. When I looked at their restoration ad it's all under the Scan Cafe logo. At best this is just another pocket in the same pair of pants. I filed a complaint with their local BBB asking for a complete refund of the $575. It was then I discovered that they had an "F" rating. Needless to say, they did not respond and the case was closed. My next option is to file in small claims and they can and will respond to that. Whatever has happened to this company is defintely not good and not one you want to deal with. There are more reputable firms out there and I would suggest you go to them.

Not only is this company currently rated F by the BBB, but they also MISREPRESENTED themselves on their website in both 2019 and 2020 as having a rating of A+ when they actually had a F rating during that same time period. Unfortunately, I did not learn about their false claims until after sending them over 1,800 slides earlier this year to be scanned and digitized.

After they first scanned my slides, I was told the final enhanced images were available to be reviewed. To say the least, they were horrible! These enhanced images which were "supposed" to be their finished product were blurry, and the coloring was terrible as well. When I contacted their Customer Service Department with my concerns, they said they would send my slides back to the production team to have them redone using a higher quality scanner. So in other words, they used a machine of lesser quality to initially scan my slides? That is just the start of all my problems, but it is nice to know they did not consider the slides I sent them to be worthy to be scanned on a machine capable of producing the best results!

They did re-scan my slides, but the quality of the coloring was still off. On their website, they claim that they "color correct every scene individually, which results in more realistic colors (e.g., skin tones, clothing, and the sky)." That is not what I was getting in these final images. In the images that contained people, it appeared as if all the natural skin tone coloring was removed making their faces look bright white. In the images which contained bright colored objects, such as clothing, animals or sky, the colors were dulled down. There was nothing done in their editing process that made the colors in these images look realistic as they proclaim.

As I emailed back and forth with them about these concerns, I was told at one point that their editing team tends to produce images with "neutral colors." Neutral colors? That is the exact opposite of realistic colors which they claim to provide! In one example that I referenced, which was a photo of a baby sitting in a bright orange chair, they said that they were trying to balance out the colors in an effort to have the wall "behind" the child to come out as white, and that is why the skin tone color of the child and even the chair were not as bright or vibrant. Seriously, you concentrate your editing efforts on the wall, and NOT the subject matter of the photo? How pathetic! He said that they could re-work them to provide more saturated and vibrant colors. So again, I let them try that in order to finally get the images that they claim they can produce. When I reviewed the re-worked images, I honestly did not think that they even bothered to touch the images since there was absolutely no difference in the colors from before they were supposedly re-worked. At this point, they were now talking that in order to get the quality of images that I wanted, that they may need to send them to the restoration team since the editing would require "more intense re-working," which would require more money on my part. This was not something I was interested in doing. Through going back and forth with them, I finally was able to talk to the Executive Director of the Editing Department about my concerns, and he said that he was going to have them try to edit the images further and that he would get back to me in a couple of days to let me know the results. Well, I am still waiting for that imaginary phone call back from him.

I dealt with them for over 6 months, which included over 40+ emails and over a dozen phone calls, in order to try to get the final images to appear similar to the samples on their website where they claim that each image will be color corrected with the result being an image with "realistic colors."

I can back up all the statements that I am making here about the poor quality of the final enhanced images received from them, especially as it relates to the lack of realistic and vibrant colors, due to the fact that I own a personal scanner that is more than capable of scanning 35mm slides. The sad part is that my scanner, along with the photo editing software that came with it, is actually OVER 10 YEARS OLD! Yet by using my own personal scanner I can get a better quality of a scanned image than anything provided by ScanCafe. I get images that have much more realistic skin tones, with much brighter and more vibrant colors in the final image. The only reason I sent my slides to them in the first place is because I did not have the time to scan over 1,800 slides myself. But I also would have thought that a company that "claims" to be professional in their ability to both scan and produce quality enhanced images from 35 mm slides would be able to do a better job than someone using a personal scanner and photo editing software that is over 10 years old! I guess I was wrong!

As for me, I would NEVER recommend this company to anyone due to their blatant misrepresentation and poor quality of a final product. At this point this has been nothing more than a complete waste of time and money for me, and I would have been better off doing this project myself!

I sent ScanCafe about 800 of my precious family photos and could not be happier with their work. They kept me updated the whole time and the process was very easy!

First batch had hair and dirt on my slides scans. I tried them again this time the Pro Service they promised me for 4,000 TIFF Scans came back in 79 DPI Takes forever they send to INDIA chance of losing your slides and they get dirt on your slides mine even had Hair strands on them Use them at your own risk Cheap is just that CHEAP and poor poor Quality Put them out of business.! Patrick

I placed an order for almost $1,000 for ScanCafe to process 35 mm slides for me into jpg files. Overall, the processing of individual slides was generally fine, but satisfaction ended there.
1. jpgs from individual trips, some decades ago, were no longer in the same chronological order even though they had been carefully bundled when mailed to Scan.
2. All the jpg files later disappeared from all four discs! When I called ScanCafe, I was just told that your order is over 60 days old and there is nothing we can do. The customer rep was well trained in how not to be helpful at all.
3. Slides that had been orderly in inconvenient slide trays are now a mess. It is difficult to describe my sense of loss caused by this indifferent company. Use someone else.

Since I posted my comments, a senior person from ScanCafe contacted me. They have since corrected the problems they could.

I have had over 30,000 slides scanned by Scan Cafe and have been very pleased with the results... That is until COVID hit. Since then there service has been AWFUL! I submitted 1500 images on August 12 and their stated date for return was September 8. Now I know they are always 2 weeks late so didn't pay much attention, but then contacted them on September 22. I was told that they were "a little bit backed up" and had over 1 million images that were waiting in the queue and they were unable to get to them! When asked when they might be available he said "ABOUT ANOTHER 14 WEEKS".

The reason that I am so angry is
1) that they had not communicated that to me
2) their website still says I should have them on September 8, even though this is October 6
3) I keep getting promotions asking me to send in more even though they can't handle what they have.

As I said, in the past I would have given them 4 or more stars, but now, I am seriously afraid that they are going to go out of business while they have my very precious 1500 photos!

Have used ScanCafe a number of times to digitize old pics and negatives. Each time, the work as been well done, timely and at a reasonable price. Perhaps most importantly, I've never had an issue with anything getting lost or damaged.

I no longer had a 35 mm projector that worked, nor did I want to get another at the Goodwill store. And I did want to get rid of my slide trays.
ScanCafe sounded like a reasonable alternative - put them on discs. To be sure, I sent in a small order (about 150) - they came back great. I grabbed the rest (about 500) put them into plastic bags and sent them all to ScanCafe. (The trays I generously donated to Goodwill [what do they do with them?])
Loved the result. Sorted them into catagories and deleted some when I got them all back. I am now consolidated and can see them on the big TV screen when I want.

I have had thousands of slides and prints scanned by Scancafe. I am very happy with the results. The price is reasonable and quality good. The process takes about a month but results are worth it.

I purchased a gift box from scancafe.com and loaded it up with some precious wedding negatives and other irreplaceable negatives. The process was super-easy and we were really happy with the scans (and negatives) that we got back. The only reason I don't give them 5 stars is because of the time it takes. Seemed to take well over a month to get anything back from them. I assume they send the scan jobs overseas someplace where that labor-intensive work is farmed out, but I don't know. What I do know, is that it takes a really long time for the turnaround.

I used their flat-fee value box to have them scan about 500 images. I packed the box with a combination of 35mm photos, slides, and negatives. They returned really high-resolution images on DVDs and also made them available on a website that I could share on Facebook. I liked it so much, I ordered another value kit. I will say that the wait (over a month) was rather scary (sending the pics off for so long), but they did state up front that it would take that long. I had to call customer service on one order (files missing from DVD, possibly due to my own instructions, which might have been misunderstood). I got a polite, courteous, professional CS worker--she sent me out a new, complete DVD immediately. I would use again and would definitely recommend.

This website offers great services - scanning negatives, slides, home movies, scrapbooks, etc. into a digital format. You can order prints or DVDs. I was nervous about sending away priceless photos, but I researched online before choosing them and I'm so glad I did! The service is a little slow (only because they send most things out of the USA for processing) but they tell you this up front on the web site. They email you regularly to let you know the status of your order (or you can check on the website). I placed 2 orders with them last fall and was thrilled with the results! I gave my whole family DVD's of pics they hadn't seen in 50+ years since they were on old slides - they loved it!
They also offer restoration/repairs of old photos but I haven't used them for this yet, but I won't hesitate to in the future. 5 stars for scancafe.com!