The Neat Company

The first is that they 'essentially' hold your scanned documents hostage. To access your data you have to have an active subscription. Even once you have an active subscription they've made it so that it's extremely difficult to retrieve your scanned documents. You have to download each one individually. Imagine if you have hundreds or thousands of documents. You have to individually download each one spread over pages. It can be literally hours of your time depending on how many you have.

The second is that if you fail to cancel your trial, you will be charged, and there won't be a refund. Granted, this is partially my fault because they did send a reminder notice but I still forgot. I'm fallible; I'm human. I did submit a case, but they never responded back to the emails except to say they tried to reach me. I'm just out a chunk of money I couldn't really afford. The worst part is I couldn't even use the service I was forced to pay for since I'd just be uploading more data that would inevitably be inaccessible to me.

The third thing is that they didn't sell scanners. They sold a document digitizing solution that was a scanner and digital filing cabinet with OCR. I can sorta understand their perspective on this though. They pivoted to cloud-only; they can't maintain separate full desktop software. However, Neat could have at least created a barebones inexpensive option online for the original desktop users.

The only option provided to export images of your receipts (which you could need if the IRS comes a knocking) is to manually download EACH INDIVIDUAL RECEIPT! I have over 500 receipts. Who has time to do that and more importantly who would willingly pay for a service that would force you to do that if you needed it. So Neat as a company, poor product and poor customer service. And be very aware that if you use the service and the IRS does come knocking, they DO NOT provide a option to bulk download your images. The IRS doesn't want to see a spreadsheet. They want to see a receipt or at least a copy of one. I thoroughly annoyed and very disappointed with how this company has changed. Be aware of what you're purchasing.

Now since millions of people like me swarmed to buy this they are just able to render our machines completely useless by deleting the software program needed to operate and run the entire system? I could see adding additional options for sale and subscription but they stopped ALL ACCESS to a machine I paid over $300 for and left my major legal documents locked permanently in my machine unretrievable! HOW IN THE WORLD IS THIS LEGAL??. DO NOT BUY THIS SCANNER, because in the blink of an eye it may happen to you, I am devastated about this.

When I called in they asked, "Why didn't you call us back in 2016 to get your data migrated." I asked them since I was paying you a subscription, "Why didn't you automatically migrate my data," "we do not do that until you request it" was how it finally played out although they kept on trying to point the finger at me. So they asked me to load the old software which had 445 business contacts in it and one of them had an image, they had wiped the other 444 images. The phone support was happy, "Oh we can migrate the one," I told them that is insult to injury, "Well you can start over again with our new service." You were not trustworthy with my old data. Why should I continue to pay you for no service?

This is the second time they have done this and I am never using their devices or software again. Apparently if you pay them an annual fee to backup, that doesn't include storage or migration of your data whenever they decide to obsolete the system you were sold. When you complain and ask for a refund for non-service they act like they are offended, they will also accuse you of not doing it correctly that is in spite of the fact that the VCard information was still there, but they cannot load that into your Outlook or iPhone. I am still waiting for my email confirmation that they have cancelled and will not charge me again. Do not buy from them unless you are backing it up yourself on something other than their software.

I’ve been a client of theirs for many years, possibly over a decade or more, I purchased 3 scanners from them (no longer usable due to updates, which happens as technology progresses), but now I’m being extorted out of money for perhaps 7 years (based upon IRS rules for keeping receipts). It is an outrage, and might I suggest that while you might feel your data is safely stored, you can’t have it once you don’t need their services anymore. I contacted an attorney to find out if they are required by law to give me access to my data. Thanks for listening to my warning.

NEVER use this company for anything. Customer service is a joke; they ignore you completely until they notice you and then they simply won't leave you alone. I've blocked their emails and all of their phone numbers. I've never had such a disappointing experience with a product that seemed so brilliant at first. I've lost nearly seven years of important documents. This company should break itself into pieces and flush itself down the toilet.

I have over 7,000 receipts and a few documents now and the software is at a point that it runs but I'm exporting everything right now so that I can import the files into my replacement receipt manger called Filecenter. To all Neat desktop users, the larger your database file gets, the more unstable it will become. Just a big setup to get you to move to a paid service as far as I'm concerned. Also I went through 2 of neat's scanners and have given up on them and now use a Doxie Go SE scanner.