Do you have a bunch of VHS tapes of family memories? Possibly baby's first steps, graduation or grandma's big birthday?
Then you need to know what happened to one woman when she mailed in some of her priceless tapes to have them converted.
Debi Fields wants to remember her grandmother. "This is my grandma, Adna Hayes. She lived to be 108 years old," Fields said, holding a photo.
At 105, Hayes even made newspaper headlines in her hometown in eastern Kentucky.
So Fields decided to preserve her grandmother's memory with digital dubs of some VHS tapes.
"There was a Groupon offered that I bought at the end of November last year for a company called Memories on Media,"Fields said.
She shipped the tapes to the Winston-Salem, North Carolina company.
"But as of today I've still not received them back." she said.
Where are the tapes?
There's actually a lot of demand for tape dubbing these days, as families rush to convert decaying VHS tapes onto digital files that can last for decades.
Unfortunately it seems some companies can't keep up with that rush.
"Come May I still hadn't received anything," Fields said. "Called but couldn't get through."
Now, she's starting to panic.
"These are so precious to me," she said. "They are memories of my grandmother at her 100th birthday party. As far as I know it's the only speaking video we have of her."
So we made multiple calls to the company. Finally, an employee answered and said they were swamped by Groupon deals, lost some employees this Spring and are now catching up.
The lesson here to everyone:
- Check a dubbing company's Better Business Bureau rating: This one has an "F," due to a number of other customers with the same complaint of lost tapes.
- Never send all your tapes out to one location at once, no matter how good the deal (such as a Groupon). Hold some back.
After we called, the Memories on Media rep told us they would make her tapes a priority, and we are happy to report that two weeks later Fields received all her videos back, along with the new digital copies.
But there is a great lesson here for anyone wanting to dub over their precious home movies: don't send them all out at once, so you don't waste your money.
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