Re the vendor finding out what's in the boxes, easier said than done. Imagine yourself sitting there with a facility with 6 million boxes in it, all of them indexed and tracked according to each client's individual notions of indexing, metadata, and labeling. How on earth would you determine which ones of them contain personal information? In some cases, maybe you could guess such as, for example, if the client is a hospital. But in others cases it would be much harder (I have had clients who for security reasons send boxes to off-site storage identified only by a number which would be completely meaningless to the storage vendor and its personnel). And even for something like a hospital, only some of them would contain personal information. Others would not. So, the vendor would have to assume that all of the boxes contained personal information, and if the number of boxes was say, 100,000, assuming responsibility for protecting the personal information would become a very expensive proposition for the vendor. I can understand the reluctance to assume it If they have no legal obligation to do so.
The vendor could, of course, assume that obligation and either continue to maintain the boxes, or destroy them in a secure fashion, or even go through them and deal with the personal information in specific ways, such as for example, returning medical records to patients. However, someone would have to pay the cost of doing all of this, and that somebody would be the storage vendor's other customers. That would require rate increases to cover the cost. Other customers might not be very enthusiastic about this approach if they knew that that their rates were being increased in order to accomplish all of that.
A lawsuit against the nonpaying client to collect past-due fees and the costs of destruction or other activities is probably a waste of time, and certainly a waste of money. The reason the client isn't paying is probably because they're broke, so a lawsuit will get nothing; and, the vendor would be out lawyer fees in addition to everything else, as well as being tied up in court for at least a couple of years. All of this is undoubtedly why they try these auctions. They see it as the best among a series of very bad options.
Best regards,
John
John Montaņa
Montaņa & Associates
29 Parsons Road
Landenberg Pennsylvania 19350
610-255-1588
484-653-8422 mobile
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www.montana-associates.com
twitter: @johncmontana
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