Opinion: Comparing and contrasting (mostly contrasting) Southtree® and Legacybox® withScanMyPhotos.com®

Let’s start here to set the scene:

[updated 12-11-19]

Are you familiar with any business that reports (without including the methodology) having “at or above 97% customer satisfaction rate?” We aren’t. Yet this Businesswire news release claims that to be the case at Legacybox. How about when the same company posts comparative reviews for two of their same services, but with different names. Posting “reviews” without a disclaimer that they are one and the same parent company? The story: “KODAK VS. LEGACYBOX”

A personal narrative on Legacybox and Southtree’s business practices. This is tough to share as we celebrate all competition.

Before reading this report. An update. ScanMyPhotos.com professionally digitizes all your photos this fast.

While we have scanned six hundred million images, it is news stories like these that made us so popular, but no order is more precious or important than yours. We are here to help. For loads of photo tips, news updates, and crazy-discounted deals, sign up to receive free updates.

Before choosing a photo digitization service, and there are many smart options available, But, first read the reviews. Sure we all get an occasional one-star review and there is usually a backstory behind it.

What you are hearing and reading about Legacybox and Southtree is why we are sharing our opinion. Listen to their customers. This below narrative explains why to review every company before ordering.

You know you are in trouble when former customers share their stories with the competition. In the case of ScanMyPhotos, our order desk regularly hears stories from people who first went to Legacybox and its other brand Southtree  [“AMB Media LLP“].

[12/19/18 UPDATE: The new Legacybox Sirius Radio advertisement we just heard proclaims that they are the “most trusted” photo scanning service. We beg to differ].

Character counts in relationships and when deciding whether to trust a business. It is often the intangibles, those signals you pick up that determine how credible a company is. When it comes to businesses, an easy monitor is to Google them. Type: “[business name] + complaints,” “[business name] + reviews,” “[business name] + BBB,” or “[business name] + Yelp.”

The best way to win over customers is by being honest. Work extra hard as a service provider and to excel with a higher level of service. Honesty is always the best policy, especially when supported by a guarantee of exceptional service! When you order from them, see if there is an added charge for digital media? When you buy gas for your car, should you pay extra to pump it, or ordering at a restaurant and forced to pay extra for it to be delivered to the table? We are reading more complaints that they charge extra to get your digitized content returned.

https://twitter.com/jcbivins/status/1126857209311264768

We compiled an ocean-sized list of reviews and even three consumer affairs TV news links from Massachusetts, Arizona, and California that were shared with us. Having pioneered bulk photo scanning, ScanMyPhotos had looked the other way when digital imaging vendors infrequently did things that hindered the important legacy of helping many preserve their pictures.

Beyond the complaints are these separate TV news consumer reports filed across the nation in three top markets concerning Southtree and Legacybox. Check for yourself, but here is a sampling of the worst of the worst NBC-10 Boston TV Consumer Report

ABC-7 San Francisco TV Consumer Report

CBS-5 Phoenix TV Consumer Report

Yelp Reviews

Sitejabber Reviews*** Hey, funny to see nearly a dozen updated all five-star reviews posted within days of our report being published. #Ethics!

Amazon Marketplace Reviews

Better Business Bureau(r) *** Search Google for “Southtree+BBB” to view

Complaints Board Reviews

Well, you get the picture. And it is not pretty.  Why so many negative posts?

Competition is always embraced at ScanMyPhotos, as it raises the tide of awareness for digitizing pictures. With trillions of still-analog photos to scan, the market is bigger than any one company. But, when a company egregiously records a stream of complaints, it is time to stand up. And, standing up we are.

We actually embrace and recommend other specialty scanning services all the time for work that they excel at. In the case of Legacybox and Southtree, not so much.

Many may be aware of our decades of consumer and business advocacy campaigns, from litigating against the banks and credit card companies (leading to massive reforms to the runaway hidden costs of accepting credit cards and a $6.2 billion settlement), championing women and diversity issues, climate change, to supporting and occasionally challenging the photo imaging industry. Now, our sights are aimed at Legacybox with the hope this becomes a teachable moment to have them improve their game and improve the issues that are publicly shared by their customers.

This narrative explains why when comparing Legacybox and Southtree to ScanMyPhotos, ScanMyPhotos “gets the edge,” just as they penned on their “Analog: A Legacybox Blog” as they compared themselves to Costco, ScanCafe, FotoBridge, iMemories, and get this, even Southtree without identifying they are one and the same. One more. They even compared themselves to “Kodak Digitizing Box” which is all part of the same company. 

Charging about $1.10 to digitize a single photo ($11,000 for 10,000 photos is …. well, you fill in the word. Why pay $1.10 each and wait “6-8 weeks? And that may be without including the final digital media. Just the scanning. Want DVD’s with that? The price is an added $79.99.

Then there was this from Tech Crunch as they tried to rebrand again. “The corpse of Kodak coughs up another odd partnership.”

There are even tools for identifying real versus fake review posts, like ReviewMeta and FakeSpot. Click on each to see what we saw. While we are not drawing any conclusions, and can’t verify this content, the data raises questions from the company’s Amazon Marketplace reviews.

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