Legacybox

I've heard their add on the radio numerous times, and decided to send in my collection of mini dv tapes, i read the bad reviews on problems they've had with these certain tapes, but still gave them a shot, figuring my tapes weren't very old and haven't been watched a lot, but lo and behold, after a 3 month wait, we got an email saying that Legacybox started the process, and then another one stating that there was some issues with some of the tapes but was going to process them anyway, then i was sent a link to download my videos (these emails were all sent on the same day and a couple of hours apart) so out of the 25+ hours of video i sent them, I received about 2 hours back.and half of those were grainy. On a side note: we ran all 13 tapes back through our camcorder when we received them back and there was no problem at all with any of them? So people... PLEASE! Be aware!

My experience started out fairly well with half of the order being processed on time. Although I didn't order downloads, Legacybox sent them anyway. The last half of the order never came. After contacting customer service, a long search began trying to track down a home movie and audio tapes. After more time, the audio was finally found and downloaded. The home movie was also sent as a download a little later, but wasn't the home movie, but slides of another person's order. Bottom line, they never could find the digitized home movie. It turns out after looking at what they sent back, the home movie was never even processed as the canister was still taped shut. The slides I sent back were returned out of order in different bags. The VHS tapes I sent in weren't even put back in their clam cases properly and not even closed. Very unprofessional. I was initially promised half of a refund which never came. Then after further screw ups, I was promised a full refund and do date (almost 2 months later) nothing has been sent. Not only dd they not follow through on what they were to have done on the order, they have lied and kept my money. And to those of you looking to have slides digitized, they will come back in raw form. They don't even blow the dust off them let alone clean them up -- so you will have to do that with an editing program. Stay away from LegacyBox/Southtree. You can do much, much better elsewhere. Rush Limbaugh needs to re-evaluate his endorsement of these clowns. The on site communication absolutely stopped halfway through the order and only resumed after the fact when they were called on the carpet about the order. I am thankful nothing got lost in the return, but I didn't even get the promised DVDs. How LegacyBox has stayed in business this long baffles me in looking at so many other terrible reviews. More can be said, but my best advice is to search elsewhere if you want your precious items digitized. Shame on LegacyBox for their poor service and their thievery!

The following was a response I emailed back to Legacy =
="I checked my inbox, trash, junk and spam mail and far as getting a reply from Lennon I can't confirm I ever got a reply.
You guys know that memories are a fragile thing and my hope was to share the family memories, through your provided service, during the Holiday Season. Well, that's clearly not going to happen. I wish you would have been as prompt at sending the Legacy Box out as you were in taking my money.

Part of my plan was to have my Sister, Niece and Nephew share one of the thumb drives of memories since Legacybox each had lost a house and all of their belongings (including family photos) in the Paradise, CA. Fire a couple of years ago. At this point and having already spent the money I will await delivery of the Legacy box and consider whether to pay additional for expedited service or just let it all 'play out'. "

Note that my Legacy Rep Lennon never replied to the email I sent in response to Legacy's email requesting how are we doing in regards to your experience.

You asked me what was my experience with your company = Well, not a fond memory.

Tim Mangin #675851

35mm slide digitization quality was disappointing. All pictures were cropped on all sides 5-10%: people near borders were partially amputated; some mountains lost their tops. The color quality was poor: greens were lacking some yellow and looked dull; some blues and greys tended toward purple; sky shades (e.g. Alpenglow) were washed out. Two slides were superimposed. The clarity (focus) was reduced. On the positive side: the turn-around was quick (1-2 weeks); all slides were returned in good condition; if you aren't concerned with quality and just need an image for memory, the images were adequate for memory recall.
I tried digitizing the same slides by projecting them on a 20x30 white board and taking photos with an iphone. The quality was better (but not great): no cropping; better color reproduction; somewhat better clarity in some cases.

I sent in several high quality items, expecting quality results. I did not get that, complained in writing and asked for a refund. To be clear, their customer service is truly excellent, but the finished product is degraded (in my opinion). Images on my original format, in some cases were very good and could be played on a large modern TV set (41" inches or bigger) with good results. The image quality I received back from Legacy was clearly, clearly a step down (not much good for viewing on anything other than a smart phone). Some of the items I sent in were not of good quality, and I appreciate Legacy Box completing the order. I do not anticipate using Legacy for any additional work. I will look for another source to use next time. I did not receive an offer of a refund.

After receiving our Legacybox, I felt our pictures would be in good hands. The box was new, heavyweight, and placed in another box. Very secure. The company appeared professional.
We sorted and arranged just over 2400 pictures. I dont need to tell you how long that took!
After weeks of not hearing from them, we discovered that since we had sent some additional pictures above what we had originally paid for ($1000), Legacybox stopped the process, BUT NEVER CONTACTED US FOR PAYMENT BALANCE!
Once we did, we only waited an additional 5-6 weeks!
The biggest problem arose when we received the box back. You would have NEVER thought it the same company. An old, oversized, previously used, tapped up corrugated box arrived. Inside were multiple sheets of crinkled brown paper, and all our picture envelopes thrown in below w/ no rhyme or reason. Now came the fun part. Where is the thumb drive?! We began to think that possibly it was coming in separate cover. While sorting through again, we discovered a very small gray OPENED envelope... maybe 2 x 4. The thumbdrive must have been inside. Resorting again, and shaking the crinkled paper we heard a clink. The teeny thumbdrive had been somewhere in this crinkled paper. It could have easily been thrown away. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! HOW UNPROFESSIONAL CAN YOU BE?! We had just spent over $1000 w/ a fly by night company! One would think that w/ the size of this box, you would receive the thumbdrive in its own small Legacybox. Easy to find
I just wish we had read these reviews before making this decision, but we were taken in by the radio ad and we were VERY anxious to get rid of 30+ albums of pictures and consolidate them to a thumbdrive.
BUYER BEWARE!

I ordered Legacybox 3 weeks before Christmas. I didn't find out until it arrived a week later it takes 6 weeks to complete the order. The ordering website is complicated and will kick you to a different section without notice. I thought I had ordered 2 discs and a thumb drive. Turns out I ordered 1 disk and an online download. 6? weeks lateri received notice it had been shipped and I would receive it via ups within a week. I live I've grid with no postal service and ups won't deliver during the winter. Apparently Legacybox has arrangements with ups to drop packages ups can't deliver to the post office. The post office couldn't deliver so Legacybox were sending it back. If I hadn't known the local ups drive I would never known what was going on. I got home from to post office opened the box. There was 1 disk, no thumb drive. The disk envelope was mangled and the disk had fingerprints all over it. I cleaned the disk and ran it. The copy was excellent. I contacted Legacybox, they refused to send the 2nd disk or thumb drive saying I didn't pay for them. They did refund 50% of the disk cost ($3.00)! In the meantime the gifts I thought I was giving my sisters were ruined. Find another service if you can!

2 of 3 8MM films were successfully transferred to DVD; I knew one would be a problem as it has become nearly impossible to play in a projector. My one beef is for how the DVD is created. I wanted to rip the DVD to pull out the two films into separate MP4's. But the way the DVD is created, it appeared to my ripping software to be one long file (and then a short file which was a portion of one film. Not sure what went on there, but I was able to manipulate the DVD files directly and recover the content and create the two MP4's via VLC. I believe I had a similar issue on a previous transaction. I will say that I do have confidence that the material makes it form end to end (though there is always a dependency on the shipper and I've recently have packages lost by both UPS and Fedex).

I ordered one of their packages for my moms Christmas present. We got the box in the mail (Legacybox send you a box to put your videos in, then send back to them.) Long story short, it took my mom forever to actually send the videos back to Legacy box to et converted. (If you're doing this as a gift you should probably put the videos in the box and send it yourself) They say it could be 4-6 weeks till you get your order back after you ship it, and that theyd communicate their completion status. Well, they took a bit longer than that. It's kind of a long wait. They DID communicate, but DIDN'T communicate that there would be a longer than expected wait. And this was in the off season. So if you're expecting to get your videos back for an occasion, have things planned out a while in advance. They videos did come back converted. No problems otherwise. They were videos from the 90's so I mean, it was 90's VHS quality. No magic happened or anything. I guess it was as expected.

It has been almost 3 months since I sent in precious videos. I called 3 weeks ago and Legacybox made up excuses about turnaround being affected by COVID. But, to be clear, they had it for weeks before COVID impacted business. 3 weeks ago they said 10 weeks is normal. Really? Then they said it was the virus. Not true either. Then they said it would ship on Monday (3 weeks ago). Really? They do not have their act together and I am beginning to think they lost my valuables and just won't admit it. I'm talking 6 videotapes that they have not been able to digitize in 3 months. I get an email every week saying they are working on it, uploading it, getting ready to ship or whatever. 6 videotapes? If it takes that long to process 6 tapes they have been "uploading" for over 2 months, I hope they have a customer base of no more than one customer or they will never see their belongings. Terrible.

P.S. - I would add photos but they have my stuff so I can't add any photos!

The experience with Legacybox was seamless; simple & Legacybox were excellent at their communication all the way through the process. There was a bit of a "bump in the road", as I had thought that I asked for DVD's but it was done digitally (since I don't have a great handle on computers & such & being older, I was more comfortable with something I could hold/touch (lol)) So, when I emailed them about this, they worked with me to figure out the easiest way to make me happy. I did need to mail back the VHS tapes, but was sent a new box to mail them back & they only charged me for the shipping & handling & not any new processing into the DVD's for me.
Also, Amber set up a time to call me as to avoid confusion in questions that I had when emailing about the issue. She was great. If you email with a question, someone gets back to you very quickly! I had a percentage off which was great & they gave me a refund on one tape that was apparently blank!
Overall... very satisfied & would highly recommend Legacybox to anyone!

I purchased the transfer of 20 films for $160 by Legacybox.com through Morningsave.com. The delivery and communication by Legacybox was good, but the quality of the digitizing was terrible. I received a notice shortly after the work began that some of the media was a different format, however all were the same these must have been too much trouble. My films were from the 60's through 80's and i expected some grainy effects or darkening but was i received back was just an obvious lack of concern for quality. Legacybox were out of focus, poorly lit with what seemed little to no adjustment for anything. Some of the films were not even transferred in there entirety. Had I not already digitized these films at home with simple equipment I would not have known how badly these were done. I had hoped with Legacybox advertised professional equipment they would make my films look much better than I had. This was not the case. I did contact them and Jessi at Legacybox offered to redo the digitizing which I declined for fear of reprisal and damage to these priceless memories for having complained. I told them if they desired to give me a refund that would be fine or I would just write it off as a life lesson. I understand occasional mistakes by a company BUT, The next response I got basically said I had purchased through Morningsave and they were responsible for the refund. I have to wonder if this same lack of ownership at Legacybox doesn't exist in those doing the digitization? I am sure the purchase price was passed through to Legacybox but now they want someone else to pay for the poor quality work. Amazing! This is why my recommendation is to look elsewhere for digitization of your precious memories.

I sent a cassette of my music recital and a VHS of my wedding. Got them both back today. Nothing was done with the cassette - note said it was too damaged (despite getting e-mails that said 1 of my pieces was damaged, but not to worry!, Legacybox were fixing it free of charge!). The thumb drive has 15 minute of my wedding followed by 10 minutes of black/gray/silver boxes, followed by about another 7 minutes of wedding followed by 25+ minutes of the boses (I kept skipping forward a minute to see if they would stop - not). I spent $71.43 on this. Nothing of my music recital and a movie of parts of my wedding that is darker than the original ever was. Disgusted at the amount of money I wasted on this. Picture is a screen shot when I stopped the movie. Great wedding memories, right?

Very poor communication. I got my order back. Over half of everything was not even scanned or digitized. The thumb drive is useless if you have a computer older than 2018 (that would have been good to know) and Legacybox don't include any communication as to why over half of my material was not included. Additionally, even the ones that were included were not complete, only partial. And they recommend that you label each bar code so that when you get it back you can see which file is which, but they don't label them after all of the work of doing it. They labeled several items as "This item has some existing damage". They are OLD photo's - no kidding. And the VHS tapes that they claim have "existing damage work just fine in my VHS player. I would NEVER recommend this to anyone. What a rip off. I could have had a better job done locally. Poor quality, poor communication, - I agree with several others, don't waste your time.

I was a fairly serious amateur home movie maker in the late 1960s and '70s, mostly family vacation stuff. 25 years ago I decided to make video copies of a few, and used a camcorder/projector rig. Videoed while projecting on a 11x14 poster board. Results were watchable, but I wanted better. About a year ago I sent 5 films to Legacy Box. I had made scans of 35mm slides wit a Minolta 35mm scanner and got excellent results. The scanner focuses and controls exposure. I expected comparable quality with movie film. Sure, the image is much smaller, but it's the same kind of film and it's a matter of getting the image in the frame, focusing, exposing, and on to the next frame. Movie projectors have been doing this for about 100 years.
So when I got back images that were over exposed and out of focus, I was furious. If I had sent in films I had never seen, made by a grandparent for instance, I might have assumed that the old technology was pretty bad and be happy with what I got. But I had my camcorder copies to compare to (see photos). Legacy Box graciously offered to do the job again and "meet my expectations". Well, the second run improved on the focus and exposure, but the images were somewhat enlarged resulting in significant cropping. About 20% of the left side of the image was cut off. (I suspect the copier was set for 8mm instead of Super 8. But I don't know anything about the equipment.) L. B. offered to do it again. The third run was pretty good, although the focus wasn't as good as the 2nd run, and by this time several film breaks (probably at old splices) had occurred and disrupted the continuity in a few places. The pictures below show various iterations of the same movie frame from my camcorder copy through the 3 efforts by Legacy Box. L. B. Stopped responding to my emails after 3 processing runs.
Another issue I have noticed in the third run (only one I liked well enough to watch completely) is frame jumping. The image will suddenly be displaced either vertically or horizontally by 1/4 to 1/3 of the frame. It doesn't happen a lot, but it's annoying.
Legacy Box may do well with their other copying services, but my experience with 8mm movies would lead me to look elsewhere if I had more to do.

This company provides an important service -- preserving irreplaceable videotapes and pictures. I just wish Legacybox paid as much attention to the product as to their image. I sent in 22 videotapes (VHS, 8mm, digital video). Most were copied correctly the first time, but they totally ignored the post-it notes that I had put on a few of the tape cases. Example: one note said the first 30 minutes of the tape were blank but the rest of the tape had recordings. They sent that tape back, uncopied, with a note that the tape was blank. My post-it note was still on the other side. There were major errors on a few other tapes (video and/or sound blackouts). After I complained, they re-did those tapes, but the quality of the redone tapes looked just a bit off. The price is fair, but only if you wait for the 45% or 50% off sales, which seem to come regularly. Once you get on their mailing list, the e-mail ads are relentless.

My experience with Legacy Box has been terrible. Legacybox don't even deserve 1 star. I received an email that my vhs videos and reel to reel tapes were received on June 5th, there were very few emails in between then and Sept. 14th when I received the DVDs and CDs. I sent 6 vhs and 4 reel to reels to be converted into DVDs. Upon trying to reach the company for feedback/questions no one ever answered the telephone. When you press 2 to speak with an agent you get a message that says "no support agents are available to take your call, please call back later" and when you attempt to call back there is still no answer. When my package arrived back to me it contained some CDs with poor quality music (which I didn't ask for and care not to keep their junk) and the 5 DVDs I did receive 3 read "bad disc", and the other 2 were of such poor quality that one I could hardly see and the other one color was so bad that it looked like it was and old movie in black and white. I feel as though I was taken for my money. I would not advise anyone to use this company. They could at least sent a letter with an explanation alone with the return of my Vhs and reel to reel. I'm sure they are not answering the telephone because so many people are demanding their money back. Please do not use this company, if they keep on like this, I am sure that they will be out of business soon. They are wrong! They obviously do not have morals, they are messing up people personal memories.

I had 8mm movies, my order was to have them put on thumb drives and CD's I also ordered the CD's to have the titles of the movies printed on the, after shipping I received an email telling me Legacybox were received and that the process took 6-8 weeks, I was emailed every step that was taken for the process and to my surprise I received all my movies in less than 10 days, they were perfect I didn't think they were going to be clear and crisp as they were, I sent the CD's to family gathering, they played them and there wasn't a dry eye in the house, they saw people they hadn't seen in years and loved ones that had passed on, these make a very good gift, and the choice of formats you can choose from makes it easy for anyone from the person that's tech savvy to a grandparent who doesn't like technology, the only thing wrong on my order was the DD's came in with no title on them that I ordered, but I was able to fix that with a good sharpie.

Thanks so much for the memories Legacy Box

I had some very old 16mm movies taken with my Father's camera beginning in 1948 through the early 1960's. I had attempted to convert them to VHS tape about 20 years ago, but the quality was not very good. I used an early model VHS tape camera and shot the video from a small screen as I ran the movie film.
I sent the original 16mm film along with my Father-In-Law's old 8mm films to Legacybox and the quality is nicely preserved. I plan to send some 8mm video tapes for processing when I am able to pull those videos from storage.
I have attached a few shots taken from the videos. Me, as a baby, learning to walk (I am now 72 years old), the door to our front room labeled for Christmas 1948, My Grandfather in front of his new house in Mason City, IA in about 1955. A sign from our vacation to the Bandlands in South Dakota in about 1955, and a nice photo of me in Yellowstone Park standing next to a bear. My 8th Grade teacher had a fit when I showed this movie in class stating that my Father was lucky not to have a movie of the bear eating me!
Great Memories!

I was given a Legacy Box as a gift from my wife. I decided to use it for the conversion of slides taken on trips when I was a teenager in the 1960's. The cost covered 10 sets of 25 slides each. The preparation took the better part of four days of carefully going through each trip and choosing the best and most important slides for preservation. I organized each trip, mostly 25 slides each; however, the longest trip to Europe took up about half of the allotment. After waiting over two months, the slides were returned with the flash drive. When I loaded it, my disappointment was profound. Although I had put the slides in order for each trip, labeled them, and put rubber bands around each of the 10 sets to keep them in the exact order, the result was a total mess. Yes, I had been told that Legacybox could not guarantee keeping them in the exact order but at least each set would be chronologically correct. What I got was a 1962 trip before a 1960 and 1961 trip. And within each, the slides might as well have been shuffled like a deck of cards or scattered and picked up in no rational order. The flash drive is useless to me and I would not ever show it to another person because the disorder would make no sense. For example, the Europe trip itinerary went from Germany to Switzerland to Italy, yet the order of the slides had it starting in Switzerland and pictures of various countries mixed together. Also, the quality of the slides was poor in terms of coloration, accentuating particles of lint... When I spoke with Legacy Box, they would not acknowledge that anything was wrong and, only after a long debate, agreed to provide a refund. But my time was wasted and I'm left with nothing in the way of memories that can be displayed or shown to anyone.