Affordable Scans

I was eager to write a review of my experience with Affordable Scans, and feel bad that it took me a few months. From the first time I contacted Affordable Scans, I felt very comfortable with Christine. She has a calming, empathetic nature, which pairs undeniably well with her dynamic personality — she comes across as your favorite cousin — slightly distant, but also very familiar and instantly comforting. Too often when working with customer service, I find I am just a statistic, being rushed through a system that’s looking to improve their efficiency stats — sometimes at the expense of giving the customer a memorable experience. This was NOT my experience at Affordable Scans.
Here’s my story, from April 2012:
This past Christmas, my fiancé and I went to Canada for Christmas, to spend the holidays with his family. While there with his dad and his brother, it was decided the boys needed to go through their family storage unit. Over the years, unfortunately a lot of family possessions had been lost through moves, or a flooded basement. However, there was some left to go through, and that included family photo albums. Of course, how do you decide who gets the pictures? These photos, while damaged from age and being around cigarette damage, were invaluable — particularly because they showcased the lives of their family, including the mother, who had passed away from breast cancer.
It was decided we would take them home and work on scanning them. We spent hours during our holiday break removing the photos from the bulky albums and putting them in photo shoeboxes, labeling cards to identify any captions or identifiers from the photos. We had to remove them from the albums because there was no way for us to be able to take everything back on the plane. Given how precious these memories were (as in, the only copies in the family!), we weren’t about to mail them.
We got home, unpacked and put them into a china cabinet drawer. It was a few months later, and we knew we should do something before the adhesive started gluing them together, etc. While my fiancé was eyeing an «internet group deal,» I was glad to convince him it wasn’t worth the risk of sending these precious photos off for scanning. He left it at that. In my head, i just kept hearing, «if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.» I did some research, and came across Affordable Scans. There were not many reviews; actually, there was only ONE on Unilocal,but it tugged on my heartstrings for being a similar situation to my own — one in which the photos were intensely special memories, and could not be trusted to just anyone.
A few weeks before his birthday, I contacted Affordable Scans. Again, Christine was warm and awesome. She was so awesome, in fact, she was willing to meet with me «off hours» at the office since I had a limited schedule given that I work across town and was traveling internationally on business. Her estimate was appropriate given the amount of work ahead and the careful hand-​scanning vs. throwing them on an electric scanner/​sorter. Their pricing was very fair for what I received: 2,131 hand scanned images.
I explained to her, nervously (practically while clinging to the shoeboxes) that my fiancé didn’t know the pictures were «missing» from the china cabinet. If anything happened to them, I would be responsible for their ruin, and may never forgive myself. Christine comforted me with telling me about how they only hand scan, and will put things right back in the box so all the notes will be intact. I was sold on the spot, and didn’t worry again!
I got updates on the project, including questions on preferences which could save me a little bit of money, and was excited when the project was completed. Christine met me at the office and showed some of the photos as samples, and that she had even made me two extra DVD’s at no charge so that I could give one to my fiancé, his dad and his brother! That was amazing to me — just an added detail that made a big difference! The photo quality was great — we learned that quickly, since my fiancé’s dad came to visit for his birthday, and they spent hours playing the DVD on the TV and reminiscing.
Having these photos done is also extremely important to us because this September marks the ten-​year anniversary of his mom’s death. While still sad (especially that she will not be there for our wedding, or get to meet our future children), we are comforted in knowing that we have hundreds of photos to show. Photos that capture the happy moments, which can sometimes be downplayed, given the sadness of loss.
If you have precious memories, don’t risk sending them in the mail to a stranger. Support your local business, and get the quality and service you’d dream of by having someone local who will commit to caring for your memories as their own. If you’re near the Houston area, I definitely recommend you give Christine a call before you think about going anywhere else.

Summary: Affordable Scans offers superb customer service, excellent prices, and fast turn-​around time for digitizing memories. I found them from a local web search and am very happy with the experience.
If you’re in the Greater Houston area and considering an online service, think again and go with Affordable Scans in Sugar Land.
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A year ago my mom was diagnosed with an aggressive brain cancer. While going through old photos and videos, I realized that I needed to preserve and digitize those memories. So I began a project of going through old VHS, Video 8, and negatives and converting them to a digital format.
My mother diligently organized our entire collection of negatives and slides from the pre-​digital era. I packaged them and sent them online to ScanCafe for digitizing. We got a good rate but it took three months for them to receive and scan all the negatives, plus there was the added risk of shipping away precious memories.
Just recently I found a collection of my grandfather’s 35 mm and medium format negatives. I didn’t want to waste another few months sending them off to ScanCafe. Luckily, I found Affordable Scans and saw the benefits of getting the work locally.
The team at Affordable Scans were able to scan all 500 negatives into enhanced digital images within a week’s time. Had I know about them earlier, I would have definitely skipped ScanCafe and gone directly to Affordable Scans.
I am incredibly grateful to Christine and Affordable Scans for giving our family the opportunity to enjoy these precious photos together. They’ve been a great source of comfort and happiness for us during this difficult time.
Highly Recommended!