ScanCafe did an excellent job digitizing my 5000 35mm slides onto a thumb drive keeping them in the chronological order that I submitted them and did so in a timely manner. They were always available to discuss any issues/concerns about my order. The review process was especially helpful. Couldn't be happier with the finished product. read more

I needed a very old VHS with bad tracking saved to digital - everyone else said it couldn't be done. I knew that there had to be a way to save whatever was possible by a professional - ScanCafe did not disappoint! They saved the precious memory of my first child's birth! THANK YOU! read more

Great customer service. You can send your precious images (mine were on slides) to them and be assured that they will be returned intact and that the digital images will be perfect. Emails from the company keep you informed about the progress of your project. read more

I had several dozen old slides scanned and digitized. They did an admirable job and I was very pleased with the results. Customer service was very responsive to my questions, their prices are fab but most importantly - the quality and care they put into cleaning up each scan was tops. A highly reputable and professional company. I happily recommend their services. read more

ScanCafe did a wonderful job of scanning hundreds of old slides and pictures. I received simple instructions and a shipping label. I am also pleased to add that the communication was excellent as well. I received an email at every step of the process. Once the scanning was done I was able to check the results on line, arrange, the order and delete any pics. There options on how to receive your final pics which is nice too. Going to continue to go through my huge box of old family pictures and get them all scanned. Scancafe provides a great service at a very reasonable price!! read more

This is a hard review to write because I was pleased with my VHS-to-DVD order, and I was eventually satisfied with the resolution of the problem that I had, but the problem itself was one of blatant dishonesty about pricing that boosted my $40 order to over $60, and it was very difficult to get a resolution with ScanCafe's customer service department. PROBLEM #1: When placing my online order, I looked up the shipping charges. I found FAQ #49 Does shipping cost extra? The written answer said, "Regular shipping is included in the price. You may purchase express delivery, however. Please note that express delivery applies only to our sending the empty Gift Box to your gift recipient. It will not accelerate the delivery of the completed order, which will take about 5 weeks from when we receive the box." I got it - since I wasn't using express delivery, regular shipping would be included in the price. However, the amount I was charged was over $18 for shipping. My first written contact with ScanCafe yielded the response that shipping was not included in the regular price. A long and frustrating phone call later, ScanCafe agreed to refund the amount charged for shipping. PROBLEM #2: I was charged over 10% for tax. When I asked about the tax rate to get this amount, I was told that it was 12 or 14%. First of all, I've never heard such a vague answer about a tax rate. Second of all, when I said that this was not the tax rate in this area, I was asked what the tax rate was. I looked it up and got an adjustment for the overcharged tax. Really, ScanCafe? You just make up your own sales tax rate? So, even if I am pleased with my DVDs, I won't be doing business with this company that can't be honest about my transaction. If they want to hide exorbitant shipping costs by denying that they charge for shipping, and then overcharge me another dollar by padding the sales tax. Oh, one more thing: I am familiar with the ScanCafe brand name because they support my local public radio station. Companies do this sort of thing to build goodwill in the neighborhood. All that goodwill goes to waste if the company can't deal honestly with their customers. read more

I sent over 1100 35mm color negatives, 30 black and white 35mm negatives, and 180 prints to be scanned. This was a huge job, and so I was looking for a good price and easy-to-download high-res scans. The turn-around time was a bit longer than some people might like, but I wasn't in any rush, so I didn't mind waiting a few weeks. One thing that was really nice was that they keep you updated about where they are in the process; they emailed me (and texted, because I had signed up) when they received my shipment, when the scanning was done, when the scans were ready for review, when the hi-res download was available, and when they shipped back my items. Whenever there was something they needed to consult with me about, I received an email that clearly indicated that action was needed. They are very responsive by email. Instead of choosing the bulk scan option that was cheaper (about $.22 per scan) where you buy all scans, I stuck with the more expensive option ($.33/scan) that allowed me to drop up to 20% of the scans from my order. Since I sent negatives that were cut in sets of 4 or 5 images, I knew that sometimes I would only want 3 or 4 of the images on each set. This was a good choice for me, but the bulk option seems like a good deal if you know you'll want to keep all your scans. Sending the negatives instead of prints was definitely the right choice. The scans came out crisp and clean. I looked at some of the before/after correction images online, and they did the basics that you would expect: image straightening and cropping of borders, dust spot removal, and some basic color correction. My only complaint is that about a dozen of my photos were taken at the Grand Canyon and so were heavy on warm reds. When these images were color corrected, the scans I got were much greener than they should have been. I contacted ScanCafe about this, but they said it would cost extra to recorrect just these images, so I decided against it and corrected the color with my own software (which most people could do on their computers with almost any basic photo program). But I figure a problem with only 12 photos out of more than 1300 sent is pretty good! The review process was easy: just sign in and see your galleries online. The hi-res download was also easy. I got 5 zip files and downloaded them. Bottom line: I would definitely recommend this service to a friend, and I would use them again if needed. read more

OK, after receiving my scans back, I decided to rewrite my review completely. Long story short: their customer service is excellent and they DO know how to scan properly. For those yelpers who missed my original review: I gave ScanCafe 2 stars because quality of the MF film scans they made was extremely low. Then I was contacted by Scan Cafe representative, he apologized and explained that there was some kind of error during scan process, gave me a full refund for original scanning plus offered a re-scan of my slides to show their real quality level. I agreed and the images I received second time are superb and incredibly crisp - exactly what I'd expect from MF slide film. In addition to full refund, I was given a 100$ gift card - what a nice touch! So yes, everyone can make a mistake, but great customer service sure can make frustrated customer happy read more

We handed these guys a huge project; thousands of pages of an art book journal with highly specific technical requirements after two other firms completely failed to deliver to our standards. We were on a critical timeline with heavy penalties for missing a deadline. This was a high-profile project that raised nearly $300k in a Kickstarter campaign (placing it fourth in the publishing category). Not only was Scancafe the only firm willing and able to live up to our exacting standards, they completed the work ahead of schedule and responded to all of our pesky corrections politely and promptly. We were working with team members in the US and India, and found everyone to be more communicative and helpful than we had found at any other firm. The price allowed us to complete the job on our overhead, which despite the overall fundraising number was modest. I especially want to call out that our standards were so high on the first round that our managerial contact, Laurent, had to tell me that they lost money on that round and would not be able to continue. I was able to strike a compromise that did not lead to any noticeable decline in output quality, and was willing to pay a bit more on what was still an excellent rate. My point is that they didn't simply say "your standards are too high, we quit," as another firm had already done. I would absolutely work with them again. read more

I'll preface this by saying I have not used ScanCafe, yet was intending to use the service before I contacted them. I sent an email to ask a couple of questions about resolution on a DVD. A reply came back that didn't quite answer my question and seemed somewhat like a canned reply. However, the two things that turned me off was that without signing up to receive any notifications, I started getting almost immediate spam from them with discount offers and I had to "Opt out". That should never happen when simply asking a question by email. Now, I'll probably continue to get spam from them anyway. Also, I later noted that most of their work seems to be done in India and takes weeks to get results unless I am willing to pay extra money to have the job done faster in the USA. My policy is to NOT do business with a service company that takes my personal items and jobs out of the country, and I certainly am not going to pay extra to have the work done here. So due to the above two issues and the fairly recent not good reviews from customers, I'll just take my film and slides somewhere else to get them done in the good ole USA. read more

I expected good things from ScanCafe. A friend recommended them, and they've been around for a while; what could possibly go wrong? I sent them a test batch of about 120 prints. The first batch of scans they sent back to me seemed like a joke--heads were cut off, that sort of thing. I complained to them, and they offered to rescan my prints for free. Not interested--I'd already waited many weeks (in spite of paying extra to have the prints scanned stateside), and frankly didn't have the patience or the confidence in them to try again. I asked for my money back so I could take my prints somewhere else and get decent results. No dice, I was told; their policy was to rescan, not refund. I escalated the problem, and was contacted by a very competent supervisor who indeed tried to rectify the problem. He offered to refund my money AND rescan the prints. Appreciative, I accepted. Many weeks later, my scans arrived. The good news: no heads cut off this time. The bad news: poor quality scans. Way too dark, a couple were blurry. Really disappointed in the quality, which honestly puzzles me, since they're supposed to be reputable and my friend had had a good experience with them (albeit many years back). Anyway, I tried. I'll be sending the same prints to another service, hoping to get usable results this time. I appreciate that they refunded my money--it was the right thing to do, since I don't have anything to show for the experience except 3 months gone by--but in the end, sadly, I have to say I strongly recommend not using ScanCafe. read more

I am really upset. I used Scan Cafe in the past once and while it took forever the quality was decent. I paid a ton because I had 1600 photos and negatives. Then I bought a gift box (600 photos or less) and received it at my home. I moved and then decided to go through my photos. I wrote a note on the box on the outside and one on the inside saying I moved and to be sure to ship my originals to my new address. The inside note was on a postcard sized piece of paper and was very clear as to the fact that I had moved and would like it shipped elsewhere. Unfortunately I mailed them metal plate photographs, my grandmother's yearbook, some postcards my grandmother had mailed from her senior trip in New York City back in 1951 and some other things that are irreplaceable. I will never, ever again put something like this in the mail because you cannot count on people having brains. They ignored BOTH notes. When I called customer service she said "Unfortunately our system does not work that way, we have your address in our system and that is where the box goes and you would have had to call to tell us to change it" Well that would have been great except nothing in the instructions even mentions this! I'm sorry if I thought that people should have enough brains to read a note and if they read it maybe they would have thought "Oh maybe we should contact this customer or maybe we should have our people update the address." Instead pure laziness prevailed and they shipped it to my old home address. More unfortunately I didn't realize that they had done this for three weeks and I was upset that it'd taken me so long to realize that they'd already shipped them. If it didn't take them months to do the service I would have probably noticed. This was 100% caused by them not giving a crap. I could not have been more clear in or on the box that I had moved and no one there did anything to make sure my irreplaceable photos would actually make it home. Screw you Scan Cafe. I am finding another company. I have used you to scan over 2500 negatives and photographs but after this I'm not giving money to you. I received an email the next day from Scan Cafe. Again, no apologizing for their complete lack of care of my photos, nope just my "invonvenience". No apologizing for their mistake. But hey guess what? They will give me a copy of that dvd that was in the box! Woo hoo! You mean I at least get a copy of the scans I ALREADY PAID FOR? Oh, and I should go ahead and try to locate my originals on my own. Yup folks, that's what they said. Not, we will have UPS try to recover your box or we will try it, nope, you go do it. Good thing for me I didn't move from out of state and I could drive over! Jerks. What if it were hours away or across the country? Yup, you'd be screwed. Dear Ty, We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused. The address changes which you mentioned on box cannot be updated online. All the shipping labels are generated online and we update data if we receive an email or phone calls. Since, we do not have contact information of residents in your old address, please try contacting them to retrieve your package. Since, we archive data of your order, we will provide you replacement DVD. I will email you back in another 3-4 business days and provide you tracking id of replacement DVD. Best Regards, Tony I ended up getting my photos back by driving over to our old home and luckily the people kept them for the 3+ weeks! NO THANKS TO SCAN CAFE! read more

First Point: The service is a great idea: they send your photos to India where they are hand scanned and sent back on a DVD. Their website shows some poorly exposed photos, which their service has fixed. I called to ask I was told that this was part of the regular service for the approx $170 box. Their website lists the Value Kit features to include: "# Scratches, fading, & colors hand-corrected" However 2 scans had no adjustment for poor exposure of the original photo, and one had a tear which could have easily been photoshop-corrected. I wrote asking about it. This is cut & paste of their response: ***************** Our quality experts reviewed the images that you have listed and have informed that, these images have already been marked for restoration as this cannot be corrected through our normal process however as per you request we would correct them except for xxxafnwqxvc203_z which has to be done through restoration process. You will be notified through an email once the corrected images are recorded onto the discs and shipped to you. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions and we will be glad to assist you. ******************** The sentence sounds like they will fix 2 of the 3, though it's not clear to me. Second Point: Be aware that the scanning takes 2 months. They received my photos 9/16/10 and they wrote me 11/16/10 announcing scanned DVD was enroute. My summary: Great resource to scan your old snapshots. Expect 2 months to receive product. Don't rely on their promise to correct scratches, fading or color problems. I give them a 2 because of misleading website promotion. That said I already ordered another ValueKit box for myself and gave one as a gift to a coworker. read more

Update: Shortly after the Yelp review went out, I was contacted by the Scancafe complaints manager, Kevin Brown (866.234.3909). Kevin was able to find my order, move it to the front of the queue, and get my scans processed and returned in about 10 days. The scans are terrific, the quality is superb. I only wish they would have arrived on time, or communicated with me once the order was known to be very , very late. If you have problems with your order, please contact Kevin. It was important to him that I remove this negative review, but I think that updating it with the final resolution would be more helpful. I am very happy with the delivered product. read more

My dad moved into a retirement community and had to organize and downsize. This turned up 6,000 mixed slides, prints and negatives. In an attempt to preserve all these memories, my brothers and I investigated scanning companies. Based on this research, we arrived upon Scancafe. They get consistently high marks from multiple outlets, such as cnet and Macworld and were the cheapest. Mailing out the photos was easy. When the images came in to review, they were high quality. I did not notice any errors introduced by the scanning process. The user interface was easy to use and we were able to cut out a large number of "filler" pictures--boring landscapes, 20 pictures of the same flower, pictures with our eyes closed, etc. We were able to uncover priceless family photos that we never would have seen again if we didn't go through this process. We just found another large box of photos and there is no doubt that we will use them again. Scancafe delivers a high quality product inexpensively. read more

I am very impressed by the customer service they provide. I had a few hundred pictures to scan, and the system had it processing the order where I would get my CDs in three months. I called and asked to expedite and they were more than accommodating. I am very happy by how they were able to help me so quickly. They were very friendly and were able to get me the CDs in time for my wife's birthday ( I am making a wedding book). I wish customer care in corporate America were like this, courteous, prompt and friendly. I enthusiastically endorse their services. I know I will go back for more. Oh and Alan Baig is the bomb... :-) No I am not an employee. I do write negative reviews to those who deserve it. Trust me this is a great service and company. read more

I can't describe how blown away I am with ScanCafe's care, service, quality and price! If there were 10 stars I'd give them all 10. Maybe this praise will make more sense with a little background. I was a Peace Corps volunteer in India 50 years ago and now live on Hawai'i Island, perhaps the most isolated place on earth. While in India my newly married neighbors became my best friends and later immigrated to America, where they had productive carerrs as social workers and are now retired in California. I took several slides of my friends and their baby daughter when we all lived in India. They have since had a son and several grandchildren and also over the course of many years brought most of their extended family to America. They are my best friends in all the world and much beloved by all who know them. Their children have arranged a surprise 50th wedding anniversary celebration for them and wanted photos from their first years of marriage, of which mine were the few or maybe the only ones in existence. By the time I found the slides and learned of ScanCafe, I had about ten days to get the slides copied in time for the anniversary party. ScanCafe initially said it would take about 10 business days to complete the job, which would be too late. I called the ScanCafe help number and got the Bangalore, India, call center. When I explained the situation to Alan, the supervisor, he immedately arranged to expedite the photos, which I received electronically within about five calendar days-- at no extra charge! ScanCafe kept me informed by e-mail each step of the way. I was able to download the scanned photos from the internet. I received the slides and disk today and leave for California tomorrow. Besides this great service the quality enhancement of these 50-year old slides (dimmed by age and bad lighting to begin with) is incredible. It looks like they were taken yesterday! Alan was taken ill during the course of all of this, but his assistant seamlessly took over and made sure the project was completed. Alan just returned to work, called to make sure I'd received the slides and invited me to "drop by" Bangalore the next time I'm in India. I'll make every effort to do that, but in the mean time I HIGHLY RECOMMEND SCANCAFE FOR ALL YOUR PHOTO PRESERVATION NEEDS. I have about 700 slides I'll be sending them! read more

Not worth the money. I sent in hundreds of negatives, all organized by roll. I got back rubber banded bundles of negatives all out of order. Worse, the scans themselves are in no particular order. The filenames are useless, and sorting by creation date still yields no useful sort order. I'm left to sort and edit images by hand in order to get them into some semblance of chronological order. While I'm glad to get this old film digitized and saved for posterity, I wish I'd gone with a different provider who would have returned me my film (and scans) with some basic organization intact. Even a folder per film roll would have been better than what I received. read more

My experience is only with the super 8 movie film scanning. Pros: Got my originals back Scan quality seems good Cons: Everything else - completely botched the order I sent in over 2 hours of super 8 films to ScanCafe at the end of December 2011 (they received my originals 12/31/11) . This was something like 42 individual 3 inch film reels (all labeled in sequence). I ordered a high definition transfer (blu ray disc) as well as a hard drive with original avi. They have an online form to set titles for each reel to use when they author a dvd/blu-ray disc. I had each reel labeled so I filled that out. I was immediately warned that the promised ETA of my order (initially offered up at about 2 months) would be a month longer. This wasn't a surprise, especially during Xmas time. A little after the revised ETA (end of March) I contacted ScanCafe when I hadn't heard anything. They informed me they were dealing with a backlog and had improved their scanning equipment which meant that I would benefit from an even better result and not to worry. Again, not a bit surprise. I received my "completed" order a little over 7 months after ScanCafe received my originals. While this long of a turnaround was not ideal, I was comfortable with the trade-off of time for price and quality when I went into this. If the quality of the product had been even OK I would have been happy. Unfortunately, the only thing that was done right about my order is that they sent me my originals back. After my long wait I opened my return package to find: * My originals spliced onto 7 inch reels and all the (now empty) 3 inch reels I had sent them. Great. * A blu ray disc with what appears to be a random selection of about 1/4 of the films I had sent them, with a completely incorrect of titles (from the online form which I had filled out). Interestingly enough, some of the clips on the BD are letterboxed, some aren't. Also some there are some very peculiar edits where a few frames from the end of one clip (reel) appears several seconds into the next clip (reel). Very odd. * Nothing else - specifically, no hard drive with avi files. I don't know what happened over there - the splicing together of my films seems to have gone OK (though I suspect they didn't preserve the ordering; kind of hard for me to check), and then maybe they scanned one of the spliced reels and then went to lunch. I'm thankful that I'm familiar with the contents of my footage and that it was immediately apparent to me that giant swaths of material were missing. I contacted customer support about the missing hard drive and missing footage. No surprise that I was informed they'd need to re-scan the order, and that I should re-submit it and that they would expedite the re-scan (using facilities in the US) and refund the cost of the re-order. After I pressed them, they offered to refund the cost of the AVI hard drive rather than a re-scan. After I further pressed them that I had not received the great majority of my order, they offered to refund the cost of the footage I didn't receive. At this point I was basically ready to follow up and have them do the re-scan (against my better judgement). Then I looked at how much they had offered to refund me and they had computed it wrong. About 50 clams wrong. I pointed this out to customer service and they agreed with my math and refunded the appropriate amount. I'm kind of shocked that a full refund wasn't offered as an alternative right up front, and that their customer relations calculus on this is that the negative word of mouth that they've earned from me is worth the $100 or so of my money that they chose to keep. I don't begrudge them that, but I question the trade-off they're making. So in the end I spent 7 months, a little over $100, and a whole lot of aggravation to have my films re-spooled and to get a partial scan randomly labeled on a BD. The only way they could have messed this up any worse is if they had lost my films. I'm very thankful to ScanCafe for not losing my films. read more

An outstanding company. Scans are generally great, especially if you spend the extra money for pro resolution.

An update on my experience with ScanCafe: I'm going from one to three stars because of one person on their customer service team that's been incredible. His name is Kevin and he is based out of India. After four or five calls, he admitted they made a mistake with ripping the VHS tape to DVD. The mistake was that instead of ripping the full VHS tape (~1 hour and 45 mins), they only ripped ~60 minutes. I suggested the easiest and fastest way to solve this problem would be to simply post the entire amount of raw footage that they ripped (hopefully the full ~1 hour and 45 mins) onto DropBox or GoogleDrive or something similar, and I would edit the video myself to avoid further delays. He said this was not possible because of company policy, but did agreed to re-rip the DVD if I sent it back to them. Not an ideal solution because there were so many delays the first time, but good enough. My guess is the full amount of VHS tape footage was never ripped correctly the first time, which is why they need the VHS media back. But that's just a guess on my part. Over the weekend (i.e., April 7) they created a new order for me, and emailed shipping instructions and a link to print out my shipping label. To add insult to injury, the link to the shipping label, the one they just sent me, doesn't work. Awesome, good job guys. So now I just called customer service again. They're looking into things, again. And will get back to me via email. Again. The woman I just spoke to said it would take two to three days. I'll be very surprised if all of this gets resolved before June 1 rolls around, approximately six months after I originally sent my materials to them. To repeat something I said in my first review, the quality of the pictures they scanned was good. The quality of the VHS footage they ripped was good. My issues are #1.) it was and continues to be very, very delayed and #2.) they left out a significant amount of footage from the VHS tape rip and it took multiple conversations and back and forth before they would admit this mistake, and now it's going to take more effort and waiting on my part until their error has been rectified. As for the two very positive reviews that have magically appeared within the last few days ... I'll let other yelpers form their own opinions about the users' profiles who left these. Seems a bit fishy to me that each only has three reviews, and they're spaced out almost exactly one year apart from each other. read more

ScanCafe is my go-to choice for having photos or other media scanned or archived. A much -needed, reliable service that's here to serve all your digitization needs! Minus 2 stars for the fact that their scanning software doesn't identify duplicates in your order. Back in the days when it was cool to get "doubles" when having photos printed, you may have set yourself up for paying a whole lot more on your photo scanning order. I happened to have many duplicates. I went through my photos 3 times before submitting them for scanning, and somehow I still missed a few. The technology exists to identify similar photos digitally, and I believe that for Scan Cafe to better serve its customers, they should invest in it so that customers aren't paying double for a digital of the same photo. It wastes customers time who do know this - as I spent so many hours trying to identify duplicates before submitting. PLEASE ADDRESS THIS SOON ScanCafe. I want to use your service again and I keep recommending you - except for this one caveat! As for the quality - I think they do a nice job. The color is good, not excellent. But with scanned photos, you are going to get what you get. They do offer retouching services if you have a photo that simply looks terrible. Should you try it? Yes Ambience: The storefront is a small area with a counter where you can drop off your box of media. I recommend reading the directions for doing this or else they will have to box it up for you when you arrive. Service: There is a bell at the counter if no one is there. Looks like they do other things in this office besides serve customers who are dropping off media. Location: Great location in Hayward with lots of parking. Dropping off and picking up is an easy way to avoid large shipping costs. 3 Key Tips: 1) Read the directions before dropping off media. You can save yourself some time. 2) Ensure that you don't submit duplicates for scanning! They won't tell you! 3) You can delete up to 20% of your submitted scanned photos, but don't rely on this. There isn't a way to sort them so that you can see duplicates side-by-side, so be prepared to really check your order before you submit. Overall, I'll be using them again and referring them to family and friends, but not without the duplicates warning. read more

I'm not sure why there are so many negative reviews on here. Makes me wonder if there is a competitor is creating fake reviews, since my experience was OUTSTANDING. Here's the gist: I went on a cruise with my wife to beautiful Alaska for 7 days. On board photographers took many cute photos of us together, and we were happy with the proofs they provided. These proofs, however - are small, and not meant to be displayed. We were OK with that, so we kept the proofs but wanted them digitally preserved. I first tried to scan them myself at home on my HP multifunction printer. After 3 scans, I realized that the quality was extremely poor and the process time consuming. The HP office machine simply isn't designed for high quality images! I then did a search and learned about ScanCafe's local express service. I had about 100 photos, so I decided to drop them off at the Foster City location. Finding the store is a little difficult (it's around the corner, keep driving and look for the signs!) but once I got there the service was dead easy and simple. The customer service rep helped me estimate the number of photos I had, and I paid for return shipping. 7 days later, I had all my pictures scanned at high resolution for my review - and the best part is, all for less than $50! I would have gladly paid $1 per picture for the time ScanCafe saved me, plus the high quality of the scans (don't tell them that, heheh). 3 days after that, I got my original photos back express shipped in a box to my home. Fantastic! I highly recommend ScanCafe for anyone who wants their photos scanned quickly, easily, and inexpensively. Give them a try - I'm going to dig up some old photos I want scanned and send them in too. read more

This company provides scans of slides, negatives, damaged photos, etc. The product is excellent but the lead time is too great. I submitted a few slides and a damaged photo as a trial early in November. I just received the final product - a very nice CD - today...January 14th. I was able to access the photos via computer a couple of weeks ago, however. The materials submitted are shipped to India for processing and apparently they don't sent a shipment until a certain total weight is reached. I have hundreds of slides and negatives that I would like to process, but the time required is just too long. Again, no problem with the quality of their product. There is no accurate category for this type of business in Yelp so far. read more

I have used ScanCafe for photos going back 10 years and generally been satisfied--especially with the "Pro" results (more expensive TIFF files of the original scans). The standard JPEG results are decent, but correction is not as good as I could do myself in a minute or two in Lightroom. But decent and a good price. However, I tried using ScanCafe for video files and sent dozens of miniDV tapes. I paid $400 extra to get "uncompressed" video files that I could edit myself (like the Pro option for photos). After many months, I asked how much longer the order would take. Within a few weeks I received a my videotapes back--but essentially nothing else. There was a single 35 GB USB thumb drive in the box--no DVDs, no hard disk drives. And the thumb drive only had a total of 15 GB of data on it. The video files were completely unedited and shockingly compressed. Stay with me while I get more technical about the horrendous quality of the video files. ScanCafe's web site says that the bitrate for their standard service is "not more than" 6 Mbps. They also say that two hours of SD footage fits on one DVD which equals more than 5 Mbps for the standard service. Also, it was supposed to be color corrected, have scene menus put in by hand, etc. I received zero DVDs and the video on the thumb drive was completely unedited--and the bitrate was only 0.7 Mbps! Regarding the "uncompressed" video option, the ScanCafe web site said that it would require 10 GB of data per hour for SD (480) video and my order would require two 2.5" hard disk drives of data. This equals a bitrate of about 22 Mbps. What I received was 0.7 bps--and no hard disk drives. Initially I assumed that the actual products (DVDs and hard disk drives) must have been sent separately and called customer service. Nope. That is all they were planning to send me--and they eventually said that I misunderstood their service. This makes me worry that my results were not a simple mistake but how they do business. After some phone tag, I have requested a full refund in writing. I spent almost $1000 for essentially nothing. I will update this review once I receive a refund (and, I would hope, an apology/explanation). At this point, I would strongly recommend NOT sending any VIDEOS to ScanCafe. read more

I've unfortunately had a horrendous experience with ScanCafe. I sent two orders totally around 1500 photos and 4 videos at the end of August. I was told that they would be done by the end of September. Due date came and went, and no one contacted me about the delay. I reached out to see where my order was, and they couldn't give me a completion date. Finally got my first order posted on October 8. Now it's October 22 and I still don't have the other order, and no one is sure when it will be done. Working with customer service has been excessively challenging. People have told me they would follow up, apply a discount and none of it ever happens. I was told my photos would definitely be ready this past Monday, and it wasn't. They finally posted the second order on Wednesday of that week, and 1. they scanned the same photo multiple times and charged me for it, and 2. they didn't take any of the photos out of albums as promised, just scanned the entire album page. Now I'm again waiting to find out when my order will actually be ready. Perhaps most distressing is that twice it was made clear to me that they didn't know where my photos were. They insisted one day that me photos were in California, and then the next day casually emailed me that actually my photos were in India. Then I received an email that I said I had sent four videos, but they only received three. I wrote back right away very concerned about my missing video. More than a day later, they wrote back to say oh yeah, we did have four videos here after all. I would be very cautious in sending any photos or videos that are irreplaceable. read more

This used to be a wonderful service, but not anymore. I've had thousands of media scanned by them, but this last batch was a disaster and customer service is combative. read more

ScanCafe is now processing my second order over the past 4 months. Based on the images returned from my first order - scanned 35mm slides - the quality of their work appears to be excellent. My second order is a small number of 110 format slides. My only complaint (so far) is that the service is glacially slow. My second order was received by ScanCafe on March 2. The images won't be available to view online until on or around May 20. Some will perhaps find this unacceptable. Happily, I have no more jobs for them anyway. Be prepared to pay more to expedite. P.S. 4-5-11: An email to ScanCafe wondering how much extra it would cost to expedite my latest order has resulted in the images put online today for my review at, apparently, no additional cost. My having approved them just a few moments ago, they're on the way to me on a CD - the final step in the process. P.S. 4-15-11: Not only has the CD not arrived, but ScanCafe has not notified me that it's been placed in the hands of UPS, something they say they will do (and did with my first order). I understand the scanning is done in India. Perhaps the distance to be traversed back to the States is the problem. Not a good arrangement if you ask me. P.S. 4-22-11: ScanCafe notified me on 4-20 that my CD had been put in the hands of UPS. It arrived today. So, 51 days for the round trip. The scanned images look great, however. read more

Good price when I used the Yelp deal discount. I opted for Express processing through their San Bruno store, as I didn't feel comfortable shipping my negatives off to India. Turnaround was fast, and I think the resulting images are good quality. Of course, these are fairly low quality prints from a simple point and shoot camera. I have no idea how they would do with high quality artistic prints. The website process was good for making our selects and rejects. read more

I heard about this product on KQED last year. It was listed as a reward for signing up, and since I've always wanted a service that can scan slides and negatives as well as prints, I chose the service. They sent me a shoebox-sized container, and everything was exceptionally clearly explained. I was nervous about sending away my negatives and photos for which I had no negatives, but they sent me an email at each of the (several) stages of the process (e.g. "We've received your shipment", "the images are being sent to the processor", "Your images are being scanned", etc. That was reassuring. Also reassuring was that every time I called them with a question, I got a U.S.-based representative who was polite and professional. This was important as I'd lost some paperwork and they were able to send me new paperwork immediately. I got back two DVDs: one with the negatives and one with the photos. Everything looks great, nothing was ruined or lost, and I was sold. I've since paid for another set of scans (old family photos I wouldn't have trusted with any company the first time around) and also had great service. Regarding the gentleman that wrote a review saying the service took too long, it is true that this is not a Federal Express type service, but you can track the progress of your order anytime, so I never felt uncomfortable with the process. I'd strongly recommend this service to anyone. Thanks, and good luck. George read more

I would strongly discourage people from using ScanCafe. Here's my experience. I sent in two VCR tapes and ordered digital files so my wife could watch old tapes of the wedding and kids. What I got back two months later (!) was my original tapes (only one of which was scanned), no uncompressed AVI files, and two DVDs that I didn't particularly want or ask for. And for this, they charged me $247. The online scan cafe invoice does NOT match what they actually charged - so check your credit card statement carefully. Sure, it says $14.99 (http://www.scancafe.com/pricing/videopricecomparison). But in fact, I was charged over 16x the advertised price - $247 - to convert 1 VCR tape to DVD. I sent my tapes in on 12/5/2012. I expected to get them back by Christmas as a gift to my wife. I was shocked (and very disappointed) to discover that it would take so long AFTER I placed the order. And by that time, there was nothing I could do about it. Shame on me for not spending 30 minutes combing the FAQ (question #61 in a list of 170!) to figure it out.The order arrived on January 30, 2012. I wrote in and described my concerns and waited two weeks, but got no response from the company, no refund, no admission of a billing mistake, no credit, nothing. I believe the website is intentionally misleading. It's hard to imagine people read 171 FAQ questions for a few crummy photo scans. ScanCafe went to no length to make the buyer aware of what they would and would not do BEFORE they had my tapes. They must be fully aware that a lengthy turnaround time could be a significant negative factor for some consumers. I, for one, would have not selected ScanCafe as a vendor, had I known it would take almost two months. I would highly discourage people from using ScanCafe. Don't get misled by the claims of cheap and double check what you REALLY will pay against their claims. read more

ScanCafe has been my greatest discovery in photography services... For years I had been searching around for a convenient service that would scan hundreds of precious slides from my family's young years. I found a multitude of local firms that did scanning, among many other photography-related services. However, their prices were prohibitive and the process was essentially push-button automatic... ScanCafe does everything with the needed human attention and state-of-the art technology at about 25 cents/slide or 25 cents/foot (films). Their operators spend 2 minute on each slide, that including dusting off, digital color refreshing, light balancing, etc. The result is a set of fresh images of 2 to 5 Megabytes that can be viewed as such on a computer or TV screen, or enlarged up to 8"x10" formats. The digital optimization is so good that any attempt to further improve the images only results in degrading them! The operation of ScanCafe is exemplary in terms of handling the materials and logistics. Shipping between the customer and ScanCafe is done through their headquarters office in Indianapolis, IN, who further manages the shipping to/from and logistics with India. Even more so is the interaction with the ScanCafe staff. At virtually any time during processing I was able to call their Technical Support in Bangalore, India or in Indianapolis, IN for technical clarifications, work status, etc. In one case, I even got one film redone free of charge due a small processing error. All communications with Technical Support, either by phone or e-mail are logged by a computerized system for easy retrieval or reference at any time. The final work product is delivered on a professionally organized DVD, with folders created and labeled as directed. The original material is returned in exactly the same order and packaging as submitted. Altogether, ScanCafe is a model business, perhaps one of the very best in the class of globalization enterprises. Congratulations and thanks to its creators and operators! read more

I used scan cafe to digitalize 650 slides of paintings and scenes I want to paint. I am an artist and graphic designer, and am extremely picky about the color in my slides, and as I'm an expert in photoshop I prefer to do the optimizing myself. (This is not their normal procedure, so already I'm onto a special order.) Some of my original slides were quite light. Scan Cafe worked with me to get them dark enough to work with, rescanned a lot of them, and in general went light years above and beyond what anyone would expect a company to do. I worked personally with Alan who called me twice (note: has any company EVER taken the time to call you?) to help complete the order. I cannot recommend ScanCafe enough for professionalism, personal service and obviously their prices. One thing to note, ScanCafe does their work in India, which has a very different concept of time than the west - things move at a slower pace. If you want this exceptional quality of service on a large scale order don't be in a hurry. They will go above and beyond to make sure its done the way you want. ~ IndigoDisegno.com read more

I needed about 30 color negatives (from the 1990) to be scanned into digital "positives". I opted for US-based scanning because it is faster (and only marginally more expensive). The outcome is great - the digital photos are of fine quality, available for immediate download online, and then they send you back the negatives and the CD with the images. The reason for taking off one star is the poor quality of customer service. My order was running a few days late, and I emailed and called them. Nobody responded to my emails, and the dude who answered the phone was very rude and insisted that the order was not late, and that he didn't have any further info (although I had an email promising me the photos several days earlier than the date when the phone call took place). For the price I paid I would have preferred better customer service. However, in the end it all worked out and I would use them again. read more

I just completed my first project with ScanCafe, and I am elated! ScanCafe did a top-notch job for a very low price and a speedy turnaround, too. This work was well done no matter where it was done, and that matters to me most. I'll go back to ScanCafe again! read more

Rated F by the Better Business Bureau! 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! I would NEVER recommend this company to anyone!! read more

I had used three services prior to ScanCafe. Failure! Finally I found ScanCafe. I have been working with them for nearly a year now - I have had many successful projects - quality, integrity, customer support - impeccable. The only thing which is a bit frustrating is the ability to get through to a live person. While not critical, it would/could be better. Just be patient and they will call back. I'm going back as I have tons of photos and wouldn't consider using someone else. read more

Great Experience! Twice! tip: sign-up you e-mail address and wait for a 30% special. I first sent my 35MM film and then the old 28MM elph... The DVDs looked great... My negatives were clean and well maintained. I did not use their correction services. The website does disclose the time issue, but for the price you will not likely beat it. read more

I've used ScanCafe at least 3 times throughout the last few years and I have been pleased. True, they are not fast, but they are inexpensive. I feel it's a good value/tradeoff for the service that you get. I do worry about my negatives being shipped far away, however, shipments could also get lost here locally and I'm not going to scan my items myself. I've never had any issues with lost items and the scans have been good. I would use ScanCafe again. I like that you can download the scans immediately upon approving your order and that you can also delete up to 20% of ones you don't like. read more

I used ScanCafe for 2 orders of Super 8. My requirements were a bit unusual, in that I wanted to do all the processing myself. Ideally I wanted the original uncompressed scans. This is not their standard procedure but they did a great job. In particular, a manager there named Kevin Brown went way beyond what anyone should expect. He communicated with me every step of the way, provided sample scans, and even called me at one point. In short, if you have unusual requirements, you should feel confident they can handle it. The second of the 2 orders was because a few months later, I found some reels that were missed in the first order. Even after all the work of the first order, they were willing to do the same procedure for the second. read more