As several have stated, it is important to include your destruction
process requirements in the contract.  We also use a commercial records
center for storage and destruction of our inactive records.  However, we
control the destruction issues in several ways.  
1) We issue the list of eligible records for destruction to the vendor,
we do not rely on them to tell us what is eligible.  This allows us to
complete the in-house review for any possible holds.
2) We negotiate, in advance, the date(s) for the records to be pulled
and destroyed.  We physically review the boxes that have been pulled and
placed on pallets before we allow them to go to the recycle process.
Yes, this is time consuming but this process has been beneficial in the
past as we have caught several mistakes each destruct cycle - boxes IN
the pile for destruction that were NOT on the list, boxes NOT IN the
pile that were ON the list, and so on.
3) We request a certificate of destruction - with accurate weight of
records destroyed -  be sent to us within 30 days of the agreed upon
destruction dates or we do not pay the bill until we get it.

Ginny Jones
(Virginia A. Jones, CRM, FAI)
Records Manager
Information Technology Division
Newport News Dept. of Public Utilities
Newport News, VA
[log in to unmask]

List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html
Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance