The Box You Mail Away
You fill a box with the only copies your family has, hand it to a courier, and wait. The advertising is everywhere and the model works for plenty of people. Here is the honest version of what you are trading, and when I would tell you to use one anyway.
What You Are Actually Agreeing To
Every mail-in service works the same way. Your photographs, tapes and film travel to a processing centre somewhere else, usually in another country, and they are handled at volume by people you will never speak to. The good ones do careful work. The point is that you cannot tell which kind you have until it is over.
The part that is rarely said out loud is that a home movie reel has no negative and a home video has no master. If a box goes missing between a depot and a sorting centre, there is nothing to reprint from. That is a different kind of risk from losing a parcel of clothes, and it is the reason I do not ship anything.
What I do instead: your originals go into labelled bins in my Colwood workshop and stay there until I hand them back to you.
Side by side, honestly
Both approaches digitize your collection. What differs is where your originals go and who you can talk to while they are gone.
If price is the only thing that matters to you and nothing in the box is irreplaceable, a mail-away service will probably cost you less. I would rather say that than pretend otherwise.
What Staying Local Actually Buys
Nothing goes in the post
No courier, no depot, no sorting centre. The furthest your collection travels is between your house and Colwood, and I drive that myself on jobs of $99 or more.
A person who saw the footage
Because I watch what comes off the tapes, I can tell you what is actually on them. A processing centre hands back files named after the tape number and nothing else.
A written figure before anything starts
You see the number first, on paper, and you can walk away from it. There is no per-item surprise at the end and no charge for looking.
When a Mail-Away Box Is the Right Answer
If you do not live on Vancouver Island, use one. There is no sense driving four hours past a dozen good local shops to reach me.
If your collection is small, ordinary, and none of it is irreplaceable, the price will probably be lower than mine and the risk you are taking is genuinely small. I would rather tell you that than take work I do not deserve.
Where I would not use one is anything you could not bear to lose. One box of film reels from before your parents were married is not the thing to hand to a courier to save some money.
Questions People Ask
Are the mail-in companies bad?
No, and I am not going to pretend they are. They do a lot of volume and plenty of their clients are perfectly happy. The trade you make is that your only copies travel a long way and are handled by people you cannot reach. Whether that trade is worth it depends entirely on what is in the box.
Are you more expensive?
On a small straightforward job, often yes, particularly against an introductory offer. On a large or awkward collection it frequently works out the other way, because I price the actual work rather than a fixed number of items and I do not charge extras per format. Bring it in and I will give you a written figure so you can compare properly.
What happens if a mail-in company loses my film?
You get their liability, which is generally the value of a blank tape, because that is all that can be replaced. A home movie has no negative and no master behind it. That is the whole argument for not putting the irreplaceable part in the post, and it is why I do not ship anything.
Come and see the workshop first.
Before you decide, bring a box out to Colwood and look at where the work would actually happen. It costs nothing and it makes the choice a lot easier.