Gerald,

I have some concerns about the  flawed statements portion of your reply as 
if you have a good audit program(for long-term tapes) and keep the back-up 
tapes on a short rotation ( remember disaster recovery only) the vendor 
shouldn't be able to hide the lose.  You also need to have tough language 
in your contract about service levels and consequences for noncompliance.

As for not being able to track who lost them - come on !!!  With todays 
tracking systems the only way of not knowing if who's at fault is a poor 
process on one end or the other.  Good processes equal good tracking.  A 
poor process on the customer end- shame on you and  good due diligence on 
your part keeps from contracting with vendors with poor processes on their 
end.

Mistakes will happen but choosing the right vendor and implementing good 
transfer processes should go a long way to prove the weak link and 
responsibility for lose.

Steve Petersen CRM
Records Manager
Rockwell Collins Inc
319.295.5244

"Bringing Order Out of Chaos" 

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