Anyone try ScanCafe?

[james_cox4]

<p>I sent about 40 35mm transparencies to Scan Cafe for conversion. I selected "RAW" formatting, as I use Lightroom for processing and wanted high resolution. I had several problems:<br>

1) They sent me an email inviting me to preview the conversions...this never worked...there was no link or method to perform a preview...total vapor. Why do they promise a preview and not deliver?<br>

2) The CD disk finally arrived with low res jpg images. I complained, but there was told that they had no record of my selection of a different image format. Basically they said..."you got what you selected"...but it was not true. There was no effort to compromise, help, etc.<br>

So...two broken promises. They failed to deliver on the promise that I would be allowed to preview and select the images I wanted. They failed to faithfully execute my order according to the options that I indicated.<br>

I would not use this service.</p>

 

[wade_lagrone]

<p>Just an update for this thread, our review process has now been completely upgraded. It's a significant improvement, and so far feedback from our beta testers and customers has been extremely positive. So that might address some of the concerns here.</p>

[wade_lagrone]

<p>@Frank:<br>

Hi Frank, I'm concerned to hear about your experience (I work at ScanCafe). Searching our customer records, I can't find any Frank Smith's or even Franklin Smith's. Did you possibly order under another name?<br>

Also, it's very unlikely that images would be both blurry and overcorrected, and we don't understand what you mean when you say your scans were "blotchy and digitized", and we have a special QA step that is specifically for packaging originals correctly, so we'd definitely like to get to the bottom of this. We find that in investigating cases like this we almost always learn something that we can apply toward process improvement.</p>

<p>@James:<br>

The email that you received is automated, and contains a large blue button that you can click on to preview your images. I wonder if perhaps your mail client didn't download the image? Can you forward that to us, there may be some clues in the html itself. send to admin (at) scancafe.com<br>

Also, we do have an order with your name on it, but it wasn't for 35mm slides, it was for paper photos. And we don't offer RAW as a format option, so I'd like to understand how you came to understand that we did. So can you contact us? We'd like to get to the bottom of your experience.</p>

[shelly_morgan]

<p>I sent a box of slides to Scan Cafe and <strong>UPS LOST THEM</strong>!<br>

So my advice is not to ship slides to be scanned. I'm still waiting for Scan Cafe to send back the paper work to UPS. And I have tried to call them twice to follow-up on making a claim to UPS and they have not called me back.<br>

How do you put a price on original slides? Now my slides are GONE! Shame on me for shipping such valuable items via UPS.</p>

[dvora_tager]

<p>Several years ago I sent 2500 slides to ScanCafe for scanning. I kept most of them, paying hundreds of dollars for the service. They provided a website with all my photos and sent back my slides and 2 CDs with the photos. Subsequently I sent some additional slides with the same result. The CD is difficult to work with and I have gone to my account on the website when I needed to look at the photos easily; I also provided access to my children so they can view their family and childhoods. <br>

Last week I wanted to check some photos at my account and discovered them to be inaccessible. I contacted ScanCafe and received a call back next day indicating that after a time, the data in the account is deleted and is not available to me any longer. I told them I was never informed of this policy; in fact, when I made the original order I was told that I would have the ability to view my account/slides at any time. I also told him that I was in the process now of organizing all of my old hard copy photos to be sent for scanning and due to this issue, I would be unable to consider them for what would be hundreds of dollars of additional business. (He replied that he didn't blame me.) I said that I hoped they would be able to restore the account information as it was part of what was offered in the beginning. The person said they would send a ticket to their web team to see what could be done. <br>

24 hours later I received a brief, terse email from someone at ScanCafe saying that after 3 months all data is deleted and there is nothing they can do...best regards. I responded indicating that their dismissive tone was unacceptable, they had not informed me in advance etc, in fact I had been provided information contradictory to this policy. I asked to be contacted by someone w/seniority from customer service. <br>

I have not heard back from them. My photos have gone to a different company (the only recourse is to take away real business). I am posting a negative review of ScanCafe - interested in using them?...beware.</p>

[mark_nyman]

<p>ScanCafe did an amazingly bad scan job.<br>

Out of focus, poor exposure, stretched in one axis.<br>

But worst of all, my slides came back scrambled out of order,<br>

which has taken many hours to repair</p>

[patricia_little1]

<p>I have used scan cafe for about 750 scans (two batches), primarily slides, also negatives and prints. I am very happy with the results -- they have come back clean, organized, without any quality issues. I just sent off another batch and am recommending them to my in-laws. I compared my images to some that a friend did at home and I am so happy I did not go that route, too much work both in scanning and correcting.<br>

I am not getting into the India or not battle (personally I am totally comfortable). Yes, you send them away, but I think the real risk here is UPS and that would be the case for any non-local option. It is a little frustrating to wait so long, but I can live with it.<br>

It boils down to -- this is such a strong value that you can actually get all those family slides liberated to be seen.</p>

 

[malek_muayed]

<p>Tried them a few years ago. I was quite happy with the service overall. Most importantly, I was happy with the scans. My only complaint was that they were somewhat slow. Took them about 4 months for about 1000 high res TIFFs (including shipping back and forth). Just sent them a second batch of 1500 regular JPEG scans. I will keep you updated. </p>

[christiane_tas]

<p>I used them in 2009 (more or less) to make DVDs from VHS tapes. The quality was pretty crappy, but I think this was because the VHS quality was pretty bad! Anyway, the service was not lighting fast, but it was nothing to complain about. At the end of December I sent in some slides to be digitized and received a letter that there was some reason for a delay and my order wouldn't be processed until March. So it's March and still my order hasn't even been processed. When I inquired they gave me a date of 4/16. I asked for compensation for the delay and they refused. I'm not really in any hurray for the order, but I think this is out of bounds. Not even a 20% off coupon for my next order? This just tells me they're not interested in my business,</p>

[christiane_tas]

<p>I used them in 2009 (more or less) to make DVDs from VHS tapes. The quality was not great, but I think this was because the VHS quality was not great! Anyway, the service was not lightning fast, but it was nothing to complain about. At the end of December I sent in some slides to be digitized and received a letter that there was some reason for a delay and my order wouldn't be processed until March. So it's March and still my order hasn't even been processed. When I inquired they gave me a date of 4/16. I asked for compensation for the delay and they refused. I'm not really in any hurray for the order, but I think this is out of bounds. Not even a 20% off coupon for my next order? This just tells me they're not interested in my business and don’t respect their customers.</p>

[christiane_tas]

<p>I used them in 2009 (more or less) to make DVDs from VHS tapes. The quality was not great, but I think this was because the VHS quality was not great! Anyway, the service was not lightning fast, but it was nothing to complain about. At the end of December I sent in some slides to be digitized and received a letter that there was some reason for a delay and my order wouldn't be processed until March. So it's March and still my order hasn't even been processed. When I inquired they gave me a date of 4/16. I asked for compensation for the delay and they refused. I'm not really in any hurray for the order, but I think this is out of bounds. Not even a 20% off coupon for my next order? This just tells me they're not interested in my business and don’t respect their customers.</p>

[john_ellenberger]

<p>I wasn't even aware that this was an overseas company until I read this thread so my review doesn't hinge on that fact. I have used the service twice: once as a small trial run and then I bought their value box which is for scanning 600 or so photos. I will not use them again. I have two major complaints:<br /> <br>

1) They are SLOW (which I now know is because of the overseas element)<br /> <br>

2) At ever turn they try to nickel and dime more money out of you using deceptive emails / call center reps.</p>

<p>The response time is incredible. I ordered a value box and sent it in around early Feb. Here I am near the end of April and it still looks like it will be a couple of weeks before I have anything in hand. The previous order of a handful of photos was not much faster. It looks like to me that 2mo. is the absolute minimum for this service and often it takes even more time. These are standard print scans. Nothing elaborate.<br>

<br /> For me the more problematic piece is their frequent attempts to extract more money from you while they are holding your photos hostage. With the value box the directions keep telling you to pack it as full as possible but of course if you go over their 600 picture limit they hold your order until you pay them additional money at a higher price per scan. That's not the worst. </p>

<p>Their favorite scam is that when the scan is almost done (after months of waiting) they send you a "quote" mail which requests "restoration fees" for certain prints, often well over $10/scan. If you are not careful and clear every check mark and push the right button you end up ordering restorations which add up to much more than the scan job. I wasn't careful the first time and ended up paying for this. The second time I was expecting it and I asked the operator collecting my money for going over the 600 print limit that my order not have any restoration done (I have owned Photoshop since V2). She assured me that they never do restorations on the value package. Sure enough a week later the restoration quotes started arriving in the mail. I carefully cancelled the first one and immediately received a second one with a "sample" showing me what I would be missing.</p>

<p>So I will not be using them again simply because I really don't like the service I received. They are incredibly slow and use deceptive business practices to extort money from you once they have your photos in hand.</p>

[patricklavoie]

<p>theres a old saying " you have what you pay for "... in that particular case, it seem to be very true; cheap price = cheap service / result / relation / business</p>

<p>get yourselft a nice epson scanner, for probably the same price or even lower, will take you approx the same time, but all will be safe at home and no email scam.</p>

[bob_himmelright]

<p>I used them for the first and last time recently for some 6x4.5 negs and slides. They missed their 8-10 day promise, so I called them, I was told that if I wasn't "so off" in my estimate of number of frames, they would have been willing to refund me the difference between rush and normal service, I miscounted 24 frames, instead, I had 26. They proceeded to miss the four black and white frames I sent them in their scanning, but have allegedly found them, still waiting for the package to arrive to see if they are enclosed. The scans were AWFUL. I own a 35mm coolscan, and a 4,000 dpi scan shows film grain, all of theirs were out of focus during scanning, no grain to be seen. Their "dust reduction" is something awful. When I use digital ICE on my coolscan, the vast majority of the time, there are no artifacts, but maybe one or two small dust marks remaining, it's obvious they didn't use digital ice on my scans, but instead used the healing brush in photoshop set MASSIVELY too big. Instead of dust, I have major artifacts which, if the scans were even worth keeping, would prove even more difficult than just spotting out dust. The final issue is it took three weeks of back and forth for them to arrange a refund for me plus it's been a week since they issued the refund, and they admitted yesterday that they still hadn't shipped out my originals to me.</p>

[d_noname]

<p>Marc's experience is a world from mine except for the fact that the service is super slow.</p>

<ul>

<li>Their web site is sometimes unusably slow.</li>

<li>They're very expensive and they charge more than they advertise. There is an up-charge for Tiff files. They raped me by charging me for services I didn't realize I was selecting. I thought it was 33 cents an image but I paid almost 80 cents an image.</li>

<li>They do a very poor job of cleaning negatives</li>

<li>You can only delete 20% of your negatives without charge.</li>

</ul>

<p>On the plus side, they do a little to improve each image after they scan the dusty negative. They should move the effort to the negative. They do scan into great detail - 32 meg files. There are better options out there.</p>

<p> </p>

[dennis_neal1]

<p>Hello everyone!<br />The next time you place an order with scan cafe use the code OEMSCAN20 to get a 20% discount on all orders.<br />This code is valid indefinitely and for any type of orders placed.<br />Spread the code! Help your self and and your friends save money.</p>