"i can just restate all the complaints every one else has had. I used this company twice and have yet to be able to view either of the videos on line. When i called on the first one, they just kept telling me the video was enabled, so i must be doing something wrong. I fell for that and quit trying. i just had a second dvd made and cant view it on line either. customer support told me i should be able to see it, which does me absolutely no good. They opened a "technical ticket". READ THE REVIEWS. THERE ARE ALMOST NO GOOD ONES"
"I was happy with my initial purchase of VHS tapes transferred to DVD. I loved the ability to make snippets and share online. However, the last order I placed came back with terrible audio (my VHS tape sounded fine) and they put the wrong dates on the DVDs which is horrible when trying to watch and sequence them. They gave me back $ for the worst of the DVDs, but I am seriously disappointed that I can't count on good quality with them. Does anyone know of another company who does this with a good outcome?"
"I spent $200 to get 6 DVD's made from approx. 500 slides.
In order to start the process, you have to manually put 50 or so slides into a small cardboard box and label the boxes with as much detail as you wish. This process took me at least 30 minutes.
When I got the DVD's back, the quality was awful- all images were blurry. At first I thought it was just the online preview of the images. But no, when I put the DVD into my player, it was no different.
Furthermore, I felt mislead as to what I was getting. I thought it would be individual jpeg images of each slide.
Instead it was a 54 minute continuous play movie that went from one (blurry) image to the next. The images either expanded or shifted or contracted which I do think is a good idea, except for the fact that I wasn't expecting a movie.
Fortunately, I was able to get my money back at Costco. But I'm back to square 1.
"
"After going to Costco to get some old VHS tapes put on DVD, they sent them out to this joke of a company. I waited the usual 3 weeks, fine, no problem. Then, when I get my DVDs, the quality was worse that it was on VHS. However, the worst part was that they decided to completely omit approximately 30 minutes of video during the transfer. So not only am I stuck with these worthless DVDs with horrendous quality, it's not even the complete VHS. I am absolutely infuriated right now. I hope these bad reviews will catch someone's eye before they use this service. Find a local shop, just avoid yesvideo at all costs!!!"
"Paid $250 for transferring 40 8mm to DVD. Quality very poor - dull, dark, colorless with smooth jazz music that was anything but. Played original reel on old projector - reel quality excellent. Will request refund but doubt I'll get one. "
"Yes, the 8mm was from 1983, so I expected decay. The sample video Sam's Club shows depicts poor quality to very good quality using their special technique.
Apparently, the special technique was broken, not turned on, or is an utter lie.
Had I had a preview, I would have told them to trash my 2 reels of 8mm film. Instead, I paid for an awful DVD of heavy snow, even though the video was taken in 1983 in the Dallas, Tx summer.
UGH."
"The quality of the video on the dvd was fine. What I am really upset about is that I asked that the movies be recorded in order. I had 29 reels nearing 5,000 ft of 8mm movies starting in 1940 to 1974. I labeled all of the reel canisters and all of the reals with the order I wanted them recorded and checked that option on my request. The labels printed at Costco reflected my order OF RECORDING. YES STILL SPLICED REELS OF VARIOUS SIZES TOGETHER IN RANDOM ORDER TO MINIMIZE THE WORK THEY HAD TO DO TO DO THE CONVERSION. If you have many reels to convert, I would recommend that you submit a few at a time in the order you want so they will not RANDOMIZE it for you!!!"
"I too was very disappointed in the quality of the transferring of my old but very good 35 mm European travel slides done by YesVideo. Mine were also of very poor quality on my DVDs when I got them back; first of all they did not do them in the order I had them for transferring them so that I jump from one location to the next as I view my photos - London in one frame, hop to Paris next, and so on. And the color? What color: so muted there are NO true colors; and all are fuzzy. I am just glad I did not do my family photos first; am working on them now to have transferred to DVD but will definitely not drop them off at Costco again. Hoping to find another company to do this for me. "
"I had 9 old but in good condition 35mm slides and asked for them to be put on DVD. Took just a couple weeks but the quality of the DVD was really poor....very fuzzy images and poor color. Can't imagine there was any quality control as the results were so poor. Wouldn't use again or recommend for 35mm slides"
"This is the worst service. I would never use it again. You can't upload it to youtube. You can't share it. It is a messed up service. The video did not come out very good. Totallly dissatisfied with this service from Walmart."
"I had Yesvideo.com transfer 4 commercials that were 30 seconds each from a VHS tape onto a DVD. The company I work for made these public announcement commercials in the 1990s. Since Yesvideo.com had a "special instructions" box and they included creating chapters on the DVD of the contents, I asked then to make each 30 second commercial a separate chapter.
Weeks later I received my DVD. All 4 commercials were made into one movie. The chapters were just selected at random spaces and each chapter had 1/2 of one commercial and 1/2 of another in it.
Then as an added bonus, Yesvideo.com took parts of our public service commercials which dealt with teen suicide and gang violence, deleted the commercial audio and replaced it with 1950s rock and roll on one and lounge piano on two others! Watching a gang beat a kid to death to 1950s rock and roll music was pretty shocking.
I complained to yesvideo.com which told me that they do not look at or edit the tapes sent to them and that it is all done randomly by computer. They had no answer when I asked them what the "special instructions" box was for then. No refund was offered. They clearly do not seem to care about the customer's wants or satisfaction. The DVD from yesvideo.com is so offensive that we cannot use it in our company archives.
I found a local company who transferred the commercials for me onto a DVD and did it exactly as I wanted and for a cheaper price.
Going with with yesvideo.com was a total disappointment, waste of time and money."
"Had my family movies on VHS transferred by YesVideo through my local Wal-Mart. After waiting four weeks to receive them back I was so disappointed in the picture quality that I had them re-done by a local company. I guess you get what you pay for.
In response to the reply below from Beverly at Yes Video: Thanks for the offer Beverly but I never did receive that coupon. Besides I wouldn't want it anyway, the quality of the videotapes had nothing to do with the transfer results. The videotapes were in excellent condition and the local company I used to re-transfer them a second time had no problem producing a great looking DVD. So I assume its the equipment your company is using. I guess its my own fault for choosing a place like Wal-Mart to transfer my videotapes to begin with."
"I bought a groupon earlier this year.. 3 vhs tapes were converted to dvd. I had a few problems with a couple dvd's, but the problem was fixed! Great customer service! Would use them again !!!!"
"I saw the advertisement for Yesvideo in a Costco mailer and thought 'what a good idea': I could finally transfer my old 8mm films from the 60s (which had all only been viewed once, after I'd originally spliced them together), to digital format. Then I saw the part of the advertisement titled "What we won't do" (provide digital files of the material (DV video) - which aren't the DVD type of file but they need to make them anyway in order to make the final DVDs which have about 25% of the original pixel data in them - not noticeable unless you're interested in quality reproduction) and decided to send in one test reel composed of snippets of random scenes that didn't really fit in with anything else in my collection - just to see what the service actually provided in an end-product.
So here's what I got. As advertised, I got two DVDs and the ability to view their contents online, free of charge, for a period of 90 days from the time of purchase. That part is all well and good. Here's the rub (which may not bother some people who don't care about detail which mimics the original - and there are many, probably most people don't actually care as long as it's easy): The 8mm film, which is taken at 18 frames per second, is transferred to a medium (DVD) which plays them at nearly 30 frames per second (29.97 fps to be exact). This can cause frame-rate issues.
I e-mailed Yesvideo support and asked if there was any way they could arrange for me to either download the original DV files or to make them available on DVDs - all for a fee of some sort, of course - I wouldn't expect this service to be free. It turns out they don't do High-end, DV transfers which is what I thought they did.
They were very courteous but not at all knowledgeable in their responses, effectively repeating the party line that they offer no option for purchasing the original DV files, which they already have on their system but won't sell to the purchaser of their product.
My resort is to begin looking around for a service which caters to anyone interested in retaining as much of the original film information as possible. Does Yesvideo save your memories? Yes, but only about 25% of them.
Addendum as of Thursday, June 6, 2013:
After corresponding with Darian Patchin, the Director of Online Marketing at YesVideo, Inc. as a result of my initial review, and having Darian offer to do no small amount of research, he determined that the equipment which Yesvideo uses to produce their DVDs does not produce uncompressed video files which was what I was interested in. His offer to refund the entire cost of my test transfer was a more-than-fair approach to resolving my original issues. His perseverance in pursuit of that resolution was rather remarkable - he had to put up with me, after all, and that's no small accomplishment - trust me. The speed issue seems irrelevant in view of these facts.
Now, it's important to say that uncompressed video's primary purposes include the backup of the material on your films and as a starting point for creating the MPEG-2 files ultimately copied to a DVD. For most people this is unlikely to be an issue. For those who have no idea what I'm talking about; you can always 'down-convert' an uncompressed video file to the much smaller compressed files on a DVD. The reverse isn't possible; You can never 'up-convert' from a compressed MPEG-2 file (DVD file) without losing some of the detail. The amount of detail, which is lost in any compressed DVD file, is unlikely to be noticed by anyone watching their footage on a screen which is less than 60" in size. It is likely to be noticed by anyone interested in extracting single frames from their data.
I'd like to insert what might be a pertinent comment; KEEP your original 8mm films even after having them transferred to DVD. 4K or Ultra HD (3,840 x 2,160 pixels) may not be everywhere - yet, but it's certainly coming. Even though 8mm film is based on triacetate (except Fuji Super-8, which is polyester), it's still a decent medium for fairly long-term storage, as long as you don't subject it to light or high humidity or high temperatures. With a DVD to watch, you're going to be less tempted to run it through a projector anyway.
I do think it's a shame that my six attempts to arrive at a resolution through the Customer Service representative led, not as a result of any intention on her part (she was very courteous but lacked the tools to effect a resolution), to a dead-end and that it took a review on Resellerratings.com to elicit a response which then led to a very fair resolution.
UPDATE: Thursday, July 25, 2013
On Monday, July 15, 2013 I tried to reach Darian Patchin, the Director of Online Marketing at YesVideo, Inc. to inquire if the refund check his supervisor had promised would be coming any time soon. The e-mail came back with : Recipient address rejected: User unknown. Whoa, Darian Patchin no longer worked at YesVideo??? Hmmm, let's see.
On Friday, May 17, 2013, I tried to reach Justine, the Customer Service representative I'd communicated with previously, before I was contacted by Darian Patchin. I'm still waiting for a response but not with bated breath.
Now I wonder what happened to Darian Patchin. Did he change his name? Did he die shortly after our last communication? Did he leave YesVideo of his own accord? Was he fired because he offered a refund? YesVideo isn't saying.
_______
UPDATE: Monday, July 29, 2013
So I just got an e-mail from a Beverly at YesVideo.com - the (current) online marketing manager at YesVideo saying in part "Darian is no longer with YesVideo but I would love to help you get that refund. Could you please tell me your name and order ID so I can look up your information? Thanks! -Beverly"
This makes it sound like I hadn't already sent all of the pertinent details to Darian Patchin immediately prior to his sudden departure. That would be a mistaken notion. I will forward the e-mail I'd sent to Darian Patchin on Thursday, June 06, 2013 with the original attachments of my receipts. Let's see what happens, shall we?
I also got an e-mail from an Emma, someone on The ResellerRatings Team notifying me that they'd posted a response. It seems to be the case that you'll never get a response from YesVideo unless you post about some SNAFU on ResellerRatings.com. Take notice; e-mails are likely to be ignored - mine were.
Evidently, and I don't blame them for not saying more, (see http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-YesVideo-RVW797559.htm) Darian Patchin is gone (as if that wasn't evident from the deletion of his e-mail account). Also, they seem not to transfer any open items to someone replacing a departed employee.
_________________________
Re: **Update 7/30/13 Reply** (below) - Tuesday, July 30, 2013
I've received no e-mails from Customer Support yet. I've received emails from a Beverly (online marketing manager) and an Emma (The ResellerRatings Team). Emma wrote me to look at this latest post. It's an odd way to find out that my ". . . refund has been processed and is ready for you at your local Costco location."
Would that be at any Costco location? Would that be only at the Costco location where I placed my original order? Will I need to contact them first to verify that I'm not making an unnecessary trip to the wrong one? What could possibly go wrong?
_________________________
Re: **Update 7/31/13 Reply** (below) - Tuesday, July 30, 2013
You wrote:
"Hi luerwulf,
Could you please check your spam folders? I personally replied to the email you sent me and had our customer support email you to that same email address as well. I was cc:ed on the email so I know that an email was in fact sent to you. If you have any questions you should reply directly to the customer support representative in the email as that will result in the quickest reply.
As for your refund, you should return to the Costco location that you originally placed your order from. The refund is there waiting for you.
Thanks!"
We seem to be able to communicate through resellerratings.com but not through e-mail.
First, the fact that customer support got your e-mail address right doesn't mean that they got MY e-mail address right. I've received nothing from them.
Second, as I wrote you in response to your e-mail notifying me that you had posted the mentioned response;
"Hi Emma,
I read your post. It might be helpful for you to communicate via e-mail. I send nothing to spam folders and have received no e-mails other than these (your) notices to look at my post. I check every e-mail. Please verify that you have used the correct spelling of my e-mail address. You clearly have it."
Third, It's difficult to respond to an e-mail I didn't get. You may have forgotten that I'm still waiting for a response from them to the e-mail I sent to them on Tuesday, July 16, 2013:
To: ****@****'
Subject: RE: Case Assignment Notification - Case #319 [ ref:_00D407JWc._50040QxyO3:ref ]
I mean, all they need to do is press 'REPLY'. Do THEY check their SPAM folders?
It's funny that you seem to have no difficulty sending e-mails to me while customer support can't manage it.
As for the refund check, which Darian Patchin referred to on Thursday, June 06, 2013 when he wrote "Our customer service team is going to cut you a check for the full amount of your transfer"; your post seems to suggest that, to get a refund, I will need to drive 44 miles (22 miles each way) to obtain it.
Thankfully, the manager at the Costco Photo department gave me his e-mail address to which I've mailed my e-mail to Darian Patchin from Thursday, June 06, 2013, containing the same information as the e-mail I sent to you on Monday, July 29, 2013. The manager at the Costco Photo department promised to mail me a check for the full amount of the transaction as was originally promised by Darian Patchin.
"
"This is something I needed to do for some time now. My vhs tapes had been stashed with the old camcorder for years and I just hadn't found a place that was reasonable enough in price to get it done. We tried yesvideo out w/the first three tapes when I received the groupon. (I still hesitated as I was nervous about sending so many memories out through the mail.) The videos were processed quickly into dvd's w/highlight reels and we were able to share them online w/more family members. Thank you so much."