I’m gong to revisit a topic I posted about a couple of years ago…..shipping your movies to someone to transfer them to a digital format ie DVD, Hard drive etc.
The focus is on shipping and where they end up.
I had a customer, I’ll call him John, a few years ago bring me his old 8mm home movies to transfer.
John had initially chosen another outfit to transfer his movies, one that he had found via Google search. Their price was very good, promised quality work. He said the samples on the website looked very good.
John sent off the first group of movies.The completed DVD was a birthday gift for his Dad. The promised turn-around time was 6 weeks, which would get his movies and DVD back just about a week before the family birthday party.
As the expected return date came and went, John became anxious that the DVD would not arrive in time and sent off several emails asking for status updates. He was reassured that his completed project would arrive before the party.
And they did. The company he was doing business with lived up to their promise. The original movies and the completed DVD arrived a couple days before the party.
His movies and DVD had come very well packed in a heavy-duty box. As he was taking the box out to the recycling bin, he took a closer look at the shipping label and was surprised to see the originating address was in Guatemala.
He was stunned. John told me he really hadn’t been 100% comfortable shipping them to Florida to begin with but he never expected that his irreplaceable home movies would wind up in Guatemala!
That’s why he brought the rest to me.
I have a real problem with companies not disclosing that they are farming their work out to others and shipping your irreplaceable movies all over the planet.
I was searching around the internet the other day and looked at a large number of companies that do what I do. I know for a fact that many of these guys are farming their work out to India, Pakistan, Russia – really anyplace where the labor rate is so low, they can maximize their profits.
Film and video transfers are incredibly labor intensive. That’s really 99% of the cost involved in getting the work done. If a company wants to ship you
r stuff to Malaysia that’s fine, as long as they are up front about it.
It’s the guys who are doing it without advising their customers first that I have a problem with.
If you are considering another transfer outfit, ask the right questions:
“Do they do all their work locally?”
“Do they do it themselves?”
“Do they farm it out to someone else?”
I can’t even try to compete with someone paying their workers 75¢ an hour.
If you like their price and you’re comfortable having your movies sent to Guam then go for it…..otherwise do business with a local company.
For more information about transferring your home movies to DVD or importing them to your computer, visit www.safeandsoundvideo.com
