I’m sure many of you have seen the ads for iMemories on Facebook or Instagram.
However, the ads you see on social media are a bit misleading and I thought it was important to share my experience after purchasing from the promoted ad. The ad is for their SafeShip Kit which was on sale for $14.99. I bought the kit for my mom, who has lots of photos and other things like old family videos.
The kit that arrived in the mail turned out to be less than expected. To be clear y’all, I did not read the fine print of this purchase. I made an assumption that this was basically a starter kit for the services iMemories provides.
The SafeShip Kit is literally the box and form needed to ship your photos and videos to iMemories. Our box included the box itself, two branded ziplock baggies, and the shipping label to ship the box to iMemories. NONE OF WHAT IS SHIPPED WILL BE DIGITIZED AS A RESULT OF PURCHASING THE KIT.
Once received iMemories conducts an inventory of your “memories” by added an internal barcode and calculating the cost of digitizing all the items you shipped in your SafeShip Kit. They email a quote of the cost to complete this to you. Nothing is converted until you pay, based on the quote, in full.
AFTER conversion, iMemories will ship all the originals back (you are responsible for the shipping costs).
Digital Conversion Pricing*
*This is ONLY to create digital copies which are accessible via iMemories cloud service which while free for the first 30 days, is an additional cost of $49.99 per year ($5.99 per month) and does not include DVDs or other portable storage.
Photos, Negatives, and Slides – $0.49 per image
Home Movies – $12.99 per videotape or 50 ft. of film
Portable Storage starts at $19.99 for an 8GB USB*
*A 16 GB USB on Amazon is $4.99 each so the markup on this is really high
As I opened this kit with my mom, we wondered what if, after we received the quote, we decide it’s not in our budget to complete the digital conversion? How do we get our originals back?
There is nothing in the materials received that speaks to that scenario. All uses the language
“All originals will be shipped back to you AFTER they are converted to digital.”
I even emailed customer service to ask about this and received a very standard and scripted answer that again, included the “after they are converted to digital” language. Based on the uncertainty, we elected to kiss the $14.99 goodbye and not move forward with the service.
It also bears mentioning that if you were to purchase the kit as a gift, you’ve ultimately only bought a box for the gift – which is kind of sad. I would have been happier paying $30 for the kit and getting a maybe 20 photos converted with the purchase of the kit. That would allow consumers to try it out with the kit and would likely increase their likelihood of sending in more memories to continue to use the service while also earning free marketing because the consumer would share their trial experience with others.
This opinion is only based on the SafeShip Kit and not the other products and services offered by iMemories. There are a lot of reviews of the full cycle service that are really great.
NOTE: This is not a paid advertisement or partnership with iMemories.