Comparing and contrasting, mostly contrasting, Southtree® and Legacybox® with ScanMyPhotos.com®
To quote, the popular song by George and Ira Gershwin, from Porgy and Bess, “It ain’t necessarily so!”
What you hear and read by Legacybox and Southtree (same company) ain’t necessarily so. Listen to their customers. This 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 determines 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!
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.
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.
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.
It Is Not a Pretty Picture, But It Should Be. It Must Be
[Editors note. This content first appeared in Digital Imaging Reporter]
The entire photo imaging industry has been through a typhoon-like ordeal as film transitioned to digital. Creativity and reinvention revitalized the photography industry and spared many. Every photographer and everyone with decades of still-analog snapshots understands the effects from today’s all-digital world.
It is not just the metaphoric technological storm that threatened the business of pictures but real ones too. Billions of photographs are lost to wildfires and hurricanes. Just the storm surges from North Carolina’s Hurricane Florence damaged 150,000 homes. With the average accumulation of 5,500 still-analog photographs per household, that represents nearly one billion irreplaceable photographs destroyed–lost forever. If only everyone planned ahead.
In today’s all-digital world, the “Three-P’s” adage (people, pets and pictures) has been partly mitigated. Nobody should ever rush back into a home threatened by a natural disaster to rescue their photo albums if those nostalgic memories are backed up, uploaded and secured off-site.
The race to digitize is on: Yet, along the way there were missteps. Navigating the learning curve has been a long road with many obstacles. The good news is the business of photography boasts so many new players, products and services. Just look at each January in Las Vegas. CES – The Global Stage for Innovation bustles with beyond imaginative new ways to celebrate photography. Thanks also to online photo-sharing sites and social media platforms, the luster of the golden-age of pictures had never sparkled brighter.
Throughout the transition, competition has not just been robust but inspirational. In the case of photo digitization–where there are trillions of still-analog photographs to scan–the market is vast, healthy and thriving. While competition helps raise the tide of awareness for scanning pictures, it can also have a dark side.
For nearly three decades, as a leader in and a student of the photo imaging industry, I have seen it all. Of grave concern is a new storm cloud on the horizon. The biggest threat since film transitioned to digital just happened and eclipses anything I have experienced before.
The problem: When a company may need to re-brand to conceal their negative reviews it affects many. “Credibility is like virginity, you lose it but once” was the first lesson learned on day one as a student at the University of Southern California’s School of Business and Entrepreneur Program. This TechCrunch article dives into the credibility factor with “The corpse of Kodak coughs up another odd partnership.”
An important message: Always apply due diligence before trusting anyone to digitize your irreplaceable photos. Research before sending pictures to be digitized.
To paraphrase the political advice “when they go low…,” I urge you to respond by researching each company first. For businesses, study your core competency. What is your “sizzle?” How are you innovating and creating a game-changing experience?
Everyone has a unique selling proposition: At ScanMyPhotos.com it was always speedy-fast professional scanning. That was what sparked David Pogue’s “Your Photos, Off the Shelf at Last” review on ScanMyPhotos.com. The popular technology writer and TV science presenter put photo scanning on the map. With each subsequent news profile, more people were inspired to preserve their nostalgic photo memories.
When they go low, ScanMyPhotos.com fights back with innovations. In a world where everything is instant, it was a natural progression to follow our core competency and the trend towards super-fast service. That is why ScanMyPhotos.com just launched same-day photo scanning with instant uploading.
Epilogue: With many trusted photo digitization services available, why send your pictures to a scanning service that may take months to complete? Use a smartphone app? Spend hundreds of dollars on a DIY scanner before your first picture is digitized? Or as was reported by ABC, NBC, and CBS’s investigative consumer reporters, and posted on top review sites, risk never getting your pictures back?
No wonder that photo scanning company may be seeking to re-brand yet again. It reminds me of the scene from the film “Casino,” where Robert De Niro’s character could not get a casino license so he kept changing his title to buy time and distract that it was the same guy applying each time.
From The Weather Channel to Accuweather This Week in Photo and CNET profiles you see why people are desperate to preserve their pictures–before a hurricane or natural disaster strikes. Yet they should not face similar losses by unsuspectingly trusting a service having a deep history of complaints to help them preserve their irreplaceable memories.
So, how does ScanMyPhotos stack up? We added below links to several more recent reviews and news profiles:
[Credit: KTLA-TV News]
[Credit: USPS]
[Credit: The Los Angeles Times]
2018
- Understanding Photo Scanning with Mitch Goldstone of ScanMyPhotos.com — This Week in Photo Podcast
- What to do with your old photos and papers — Read on The Mercury News
- How to tackle those boxes full of old photos — Read on WashPost
- California wildfire wakeup call — Scan, save and protect now— Read on USA Today
- Preserving Your Photos and Film with ScanMyPhotos.Com— Read and Podcast on Andy Taylor TechTalkRadio
- Why it’s important to protect your cherished, irreplaceable photos before a natural disaster happens– Read more on accuweather.com
- Memories in a shoebox: Digitizing old photos unlocks a flood of mixed emotions– Read on cnet.com
- Out of the Shoebox: Bulk Scanning Gives Old Photos a New Purpose– Read on direporter.com
- A much-needed service – Read on twitter.com
- How to Preserve Old Photos: 7 Ways to Keep Antique Family Photos Looking Their Best – Read on familyhandyman.com
- Nostalgia Ain’t What it Used to Be – Read on joefarace.com
- Why You Should Use Snapchat To Promote Your Businesses– Read on fupping.com
- The Big Question: How Important is Video Marketing? – Read on spinsucks.com
- Visa, Mastercard Are Close to Swipe-Fee Agreement– Read on bloomberg.com
- 91% of Pictures Uploaded to Photo-Sharing Sites Are From Smartphones, ScanMyPhotos Study Reveals– Read on prweb.com
- Scanning Leader ScanMyPhotos Takes on Epson over Advertising Claims– Read on thedeadpixelssociety.com
- Decluttering Challenge – Day 27 – Photographs – Read on simplyenough.net
- 9 Unexpected Things You Should Never Store in the Garage – Read on realtor.com
- ScanMyPhotos photo scanning service review – Read on the-gadgeteer.com
2017
- A digitizing David takes on photo-scanning Goliath – Read on techcrunch.com
- If you are overwhelmed with photos, especially ones from years past, tune in! – Listen on soundcloud
- Prepare now, protect later: 11 hurricane prep tips you can use this weekend – Read on houseloanblog.net
- With No Women Keynote Speakers, Does CES Have a Diversity Problem? – Read on adweek.com
- Three Ways to Preserve Your Precious Photos Before Disaster Strikes – Read on huffingtonpost.com
- How To Preserve Your Photos In Case Of Disaster – Read on parentingbytes.com
- “Scan My Photos is one of the coolest services in the world” – Read on techcrunch.com
- Thanks For the Memories Part IV – Building Your Legacy – Read on tech50plus.com
- Using Your Phone to Scan Pictures of Prints – Read on nytimes.com
- Is your home drowning in old photos? – Read on washingtonpost.com
- Turn old printed pictures to digital with these services – Read on kron4.com
- Photo Organizing and Digitizing with Scan My Photos – Read on simplyenough.net
- Is Snapchat Poised to Disappear? – Read on scanmyphotos.com
- Pepsi ‘Missed the Mark’ in Protest Ad – Read on targetmarketingmag.com
- 2017 Mother’s Day Gift Guide for Seniors – Read on caring.com
- Mother’s Day 2017 – Gifts for the 50+ Mom – Read on tech50plus.com
- How to declutter minds, bodies and homes for 2017 without pain – Read on thecelebritycafe.com
- World Backup Day 2017: ‘We Don’t Know the Day Nor the Hour’ – Read on eweek.com
- Let’s Get Unstuck! Time to Remove Photos From Sticky Album Pages – Read on upfront.ngsgenealogy.org
- Epson FastFoto – Read on mikepasini.com
- 3 New Year’s tech resolutions you must keep – Read on usatoday.com
- Photo Scanning App vs ScanMyPhotos.com – Read on youtube.com
- Valentine’s Day Gifts for Dudes Are Gaining Ground – Read on nbcnews.com
- How Small Firms Can Defuse a Political Threat and Blunt a Boycott – Read on nytimes.com
2016
- The Best New Ways to Scan Your Old Photos – Read on wsj.com
- Turning Your Vacation Photos Into Works of Art – Read on www.nytimes.com
- @TechTalkRadio Photo Scanning Interview – Read on ScanMyPhotos Blog
- Do You Know What to Charge Your Customers? – Read on inc.com
- 20 Cool Gadgets for the New Year – Read on aarp.com
- How to Save all your Printed Photos – Watch on Rebecca Brand’s YouTube
- Archiving photos does not have to be daunting – Read on buzzfeed.com
- Photos and documents need backup – Read on nola.com
- The Most Popular Photo Ops in America – Read on cntraveler.com
- 70 percent of old analog photos submitted are travel pictures – Read on reviewjournal.com
- Get Organized in 2016: Digitize your old photo – Read on nbcnews.com
- What are my options for scanning lots of photos? – on 512tech.com
2015
- Scanning service helps rescue old photos before they fade away – Read on latimes.com
- 10 last-minute tech stocking stuffers – Read on usatoday.com
- How to Preserve Old Photos – Read on rd.com
- Photo Overload! – Read on simplyborganized.com
- How ScanMyPhotos.com builds its business without advertising – Read on internetretailer.com
- The Burden To Unload – Read on mediapost.com
- Scanning Companies Will Digitize Your Old Photos, Fast – Read on ktla.com
- Saving your Priceless Memories – Read on latimes.com
- THE EASY WAY DIGITIZE YOUR SHOEBOX OF OLD PHOTOS – Read on seniorplanet.org
- Turn Your Snapshots Into Digital Photos – Read on techaeris.com
- How to Use Customer Testimonials to Boost Sales – Read on trustfile.avalara.com
- 9 ways to organize your photos. Really. – Read on washingtonpost.com
- The Problem with Today’s Photo-Sharing Apps – Read on tech.co
- How Can You Affordably Digitize Family Photos? – Read on shebudgets.com
- The Challenges Of Preserving Your Digital Legacy – Read on forbes.com
- Instagram Is Under Fire, Literally – Read on tech.co
- 3 Ways to Make News for Your Business – Read on tech.co
- Making Memories Easy to Use and Share – Read on dealingwithdementia.wordpress.com
- Donald Trump’s $3 Website – Read on tech.co
- Product Review: ScanMyPhotos.com – Read on lifeedited.com
- 4 Things Successful Small-Business Owners Do Every Morning – Read on huffingtonpost.com
- How ScanMyPhotos.com is Solving Photo-Sharing, Cloud Storages’ Biggest Problem – Read on businesswire.com
- Big loyalty, small price – ScanMy Photos – Read on internetretailer.com
- How to scan and archive your old printed photos – Read on cnet.com
- Saying goodbye to iPhoto – Read on framework.latimes.com
- Scanning Old Photographs Boosts The Economy – on forbes.com
- One of the most active class representatives in the swipe-fee litigation – on bloomberg.com
- Flowers is our Secret Sauce – on rescue.ceoblognation.com
- Have photos in albums? Get them scanned. – on randomolive.com
- New year’s project: Scan your old photos now – on usatoday.com
- Organizing Photos – oncomp.com
- Scan Your Prints a Priority Mail Boxful at a Time – on petapixel.com
- Organizing Photos – oncomp.com
Editors Note: Product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. Reported by Mitch Goldstone, President & CEO, ScanMyPhotos.com
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