Hello,

Actually - the boxes left at a storage company can be worse than debris -
they are company assets! And guess what? As a storage vendor you cannot hold
assets hostage in a bankruptcy. So the Bankruptcy trustee can require you to
pull and produce these assets. And you are just another creditor and cannot
recover your costs of pulling the boxes or files except in the normal
bankruptcy process. So unlike many vendors - where you are only out what you
were previously owned  - and have little or no obligation to continue to
incur additional costs or provide services to a bankrupt company, you have
to provide services and/or pull boxes with slim hope of future
reimbursement. At least that's the way it worked about 9 years ago when this
happened to us. 

Gregg M Long JD, CRM
MML Services, Inc.
423-899-1770 Ext.-312
423-316-5554 Cell
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-----Original Message-----
From: Records Management Program [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
Of Hugh Smith
Sent: Monday, September 21, 2009 12:40 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Records Management Strategy

There are a great many companies going through bankruptcies.  As such  
there is typically a surviving entity that has no assets and very  
little in the way of a budget to maintain records.  Some have a  
strategy of shredding all records of the old company to reduce cost.  
Current files on employees, technology and so on are kept in the new  
and surviving entity but they are using this event as a means to  
basically reduce their retention period from the date of the  
bankruptcy going forward.  Shredding is moving at record paces.

Contracts with hostage fees are being walked away from. Storage costs  
are reduced and the surviving entity has a greatly reduced cost basis.  
They are creating new retention schedules with 2008 as year 1 and  
establishing a very short retention period of three years before  
shredding. The only records they will maintain beyond three years are  
those required to be maintained for seven years by the IRS.

Boxes left behind at a storage company after a bankruptcy become  
debris and more and more storage companies are left with these boxes  
and the risk of just destroying them.

Has anyone dealt with this?


Hugh Smith
FIRELOCK Fireproof Modular Vaults
[log in to unmask]
(610)  756-4440    Fax (610)  756-4134
WWW.FIRELOCK.COM

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