I like David Gaynon's suggestion.  

A discount "pricing group" might be just the thing to lower costs for
the individual organizations using the service and help the storage
vendors manage their resources better by prioritizing what the group
needs in terms of service levels, help desk coverage, response times,
system maintenance and upgrades, etc.

I have a feeling that some of the customers who experienced price
increases may have not generated the volume that their original pricing
was based on or may not have gotten price increases for a long time even
when the service provider's cost increased.  Many large shred vendors
have a certain "value added" model that is part of how they do business,
but perhaps the vendor would be able to keep costs down more effectively
by working with a group that has already reached concensus on what,
exactly, is the amount of value that is being provided and whether or
not it is worth the cost?

I think a lot of service providers are trying to standardize or automate
their service models in order to avoid having to tailor a business
process to every individual customer's preferences.  However, a larger
user group that has reached concensus on a requested change to a
business process because it can be implemented at several customer sites
will have a better shot at demonstrating that the funds were usefully
spent to make an improvement to the service level.

I would imagine that some of the ARMA Industry Specific Groups could get
concensus on a service model that would be common to organizations in a
similar industry.  By electing a user-group liaison to interface with a
record storage service delivery manager high up in the organization,
maybe the group as a whole could get some leverage.

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