ScanCafe Avis 3 362

I have had numerous fantastic experiences with ScanCafe, but not the last one. Prints and documents were scanned fine on this order, but film negative scans were originally processed with great orange streaks, then re-scanned at my request with copious dust. The dust issue was corrected with a second request. I specifically asked them to be attentive to colors, and many of the negative scans looked washed out, but the white balance was about right. This was not corrected after I demonstrated the problem and a simple resolution. I will be considering other services for my next order.

I've discovered that after 2 months of completing my order I'm being charged $10 a month for something I didn't know about or even want. I will never use this company again. Be sure and read, if it's even there, the small, fine print.

I sent three packages of slides. They kept sending me emails to finish sending the first package in, after they already received it. The also had the order numbers for the same package. Then after sending all three packages in, One of the orders disappeared from my account.

Unbelievably scammy behavior -- they have you estimate the number of photos to be scanned and charge you based on that estimate, promising a refund if you overestimate.

What they don't tell you is that the refund comes in the form of a GIFT CARD? That can only be used for MORE SCANS!?

They also include upsells in your final checkout basket you didn't ask for, like photo touch-ups.

I highly suggest you go elsewhere.

------

** UPDATE, after ScamCafe response **

Please think about how little sense your response makes. Why does having a gift card, with 16 alphanumeric characters I have to enter somewhere alongside any regular payment information, "facilitate their projects and also the time they spend on them"? How does that save anyone time??

Same with the undisclosed $10 recurring monthly cloud fee. If you see your Wharton Bro founders in the hallway, please tell them to go do something very pleasant to themselves for me.

The process was much faster than I anticipated. The quality of the scans is great!
Thank you Scancafe

Great company 10 years ago, but not now. Failed to return my slides until I called to complain, 2 months after they should have. Several hundred images have dirt spots not on the slides themselves, and others were so pixelated as to be ruined. Did not even scan 1/4 of the slides I sent. Returned slides in original box, but with large hole in side, none of the padding, and one bag of slides was unzipped so some may have been lost.

Second time they snuck me with a hidden fee, this time directly to my credit card with no notification. Should have blocked payment, but made the mistake of trying to work with their customer service team. Big mistake, they would only give credit for their mistake. I lost all trust in them. Worse, the quality of their scans is average at best.

I've used Scan Cafe multiple times. They always do a fast and efficient high-quality job.

I have used ScanCafe for years. In the beginning, they were fabulous. I have scanned more than a thousand prints and slides.

In the last year, the quality control has vanished. 3 times now, after they have "scanned" my photo album, I have received photos of the entire pages of the albums and not individual cropped and color corrected photos. So I write back and complain, they apologize, and a few days later I have the individual photos. This has happened *3 times*. Also, the very last photo album I sent them came back with blurry and uncolor-corrected and balanced photos. I had to take pictures of my original album and show them how bad the scans were. They also ripped some of the photos out of the album (they were taped in with double-stick tape) and ripped a hole in the album page. After writing them and complaining, they fixed the color correction and exposures of all the pictures and they looked pretty good - except the photos were still blurry. So they offered to rescan the entire album, so I sent it back, and then they screwed it up again. They scanned the entire page (not individual photos). They have not responded to emails yet (it's been a few days). You would think that they would be extra careful in this last rescan.

Update: ScanCafe did come through in the end and rescanned my album at no cost and I got it back. I'll update the stars from 2 to 3, because they did follow through and fix their multiply mistakes, and the quality of the scans is quite good. I can't go higher than 3 stars, because the mistakes should not have been made in the first place. Ripping photos out of heirloom photo albums is not acceptable. The problem with not cropping the photos from the pages has occurred 3 times now. The technician responsible for scanning should have been fired after the first mistake, since clearly they were not paying attention. And when I sent back the photos for rescanning, the same problems happened again.

I know slides will never scan as beautifully as they look projected, but I do not expect them to come back totally out of order and with no attempt to get big chunks of dust off, with some duplicates and some slides not scanned.

I've been using ScanCafe for over a decade - I've done probably a dozen or so projects with them so far. Every single time they have exceeded my expectations. The scans are well done, the shipping is timely, etc. Most importantly, for someone who is very fastidious about something like family memories, they are very communicative and responsive throughout the process.

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. 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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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!