Marin – Shredding

You've done the difficult preliminary work of setting up a shredding situation in your mind. Now you are ready to move on to the next step of calling some shredding companies in your area, including in the cities of Novato, San Anselmo, Corte Madera, Sausalito, Ross and Belevedere, to conduct your first interviews. You should be ready to take down the answers to your questions so that you can go over them later and compare notes between different companies.

Use the following questions to craft a personalized phone interview for the shredding companies you decide to call in Marin County. You'll want to be as thorough as possible so you can make the most informed decision when it comes time to interview companies in person and also to make your final choice.

• Has your paper shredding company received and maintained a Diamond Certified rating?
• Do you belong to the National Association for Information Destruction (NAID)? Are you certified through them?
• What levels of shredding security do you have available?
• Are you able to handle any size job, from personal documents to business clearances?
• What type of paper shredders do you use?
• Are you a shredding facility or a mobile shredder or both?
• Do you issue certificates of destruction at the completion of each job?
• What is your process for setting up regularly scheduled shredding visits? Is this a service you only offer businesses?
• Why should I hire your company?
• What makes you different from other shredding companies in Marin County?
• Are all of your employees insured?
• Do you offer in-service training for your employees on up-to-date shredding methods and security measures? If yes, when was the last in-service, what was its title and who conducted it?
• How long have you been in business?
• Can your shredding machines handle more than paper documents? What other materials can be shred?
• Do I have to remove fasteners before handing over my documents for shredding?

Shredding documents is an important part of living a responsible, adult life. However, it can be a scary process to try to find a shredding company that will treat your information securely and with care. There is no definite way to completely trust that all your documents are shred unless you do it yourself. If you don't have time for that, you'll have to try to locate a trustworthy company in your area of Marin County, whether you're in the bigger cities of Novato, San Anselmo, Corte Madera, Sausalito, Ross and Belevedere or the smaller towns of Almonte, Black Point, Ignacio, San Quentin and Terra Linda.

One way to help ease your mind is to choose a Diamond Certified shredding company because all certified companies have passed an in-depth ratings process that most other companies can't think about passing. If you want quality from a shredding business in Marin County and the greater Bay Area, you can have confidence choosing a Diamond Certified company. Diamond Certified reports are available online for all certified companies. And you'll never be fooled by fake reviews. That's because all research is performed in live telephone interviews of actual customers.

If you can't find a Diamond Certified shredding expert in your area, you'll have to do some research on your own. If you do, it's wise to call some references provided by your shredding representative. Keep in mind, though, that references provided to you by the shredding company are not equal in value to the large random sample of customers surveyed during the Diamond Certified ratings process. That's because references given to customers from companies are cherry-picked instead of randomly selected from all their customers. So the shredding business will likely give you a few customers to call that they know are satisfied.

If you do call references on your own, specifically ask for a list of the company's 10 most recent customers. This will help avoid them giving you the names of only customers they know were satisfied.

• Were you satisfied with the document destruction services you received from this Marin County shredding company?
• Would you (or do you) work with this paper shredding company on a regular basis for all your document destruction needs?
• Describe the best part of working with this local shredding company? The worst part?
• Do you have your documents shred on-site, use a locked box or take your documents to their facility? If the document destruction company offers more than one option, why did you choose to go with the one you did?
• Would you recommend/have you recommended this company to your colleagues, friends and family?
• If you are no longer working with the document destruction service, why did you end the professional relationship?
• If you have a regularly scheduled shredding visit coming up, would you mind if I stopped by to see how the process works?

You'll want to have a good awareness of the variety of ways your paper can be shredded in this day and age. It is no longer good enough just to slice your documents into thin strips -all levels of security shred-size and type are offered. Some include:

• Strip cut shredders have the lowest level of security, these slice the paper into up and down strips which can easily be put together by a determined identity thief.
• Shredders that cut documents into rectangular or diamond pieces.
• Shredders that make tiny squares or circles from the documents.
• Shredders that cut the documents so many times that the pieces are able to pass through mesh once finished.
• The latest technology in shredding has produced machines that grind the paper back to pulp.

The security you are looking for with shredding companies in Marin County, whether in the cities of San Rafael, Mill Valley, Larkspur, Tiburon and Fairfax or the towns of Almonte, Black Point, Ignacio, San Quentin and Terra Linda, should determine which company you choose to dispose of your documents. Identity theft is definitely taking a turn for the more advanced, and you should hire a company who can make you feel the most secure when destroying your personal information. Levels one through six cut papers into a size range from 12mm to .8mm -check with your shredding company on their particular shredding size abilities.

What To Expect When Dealing With Marin County Shredding Companies
Hiring a company to take care of your personal or business document disposal is a major decision that affects the safety of your own personal information or that of people for whom you are responsible. Once you've made that decision, you should be aware of how a regular shredding disposal session will go, especially if you own your own business.

The following are five steps normally included in an on-site shredding visit:

• Storage of documents: Shredding companies usually offer locked boxes that are used to store documents between regularly scheduled visits. These boxes are tamper-proof and are often only able to be accessed by the shredding specialists.
• Shredding visit: Employees from your chosen shredding company will arrive at a previously scheduled time with their machines in a marked vehicle. This vehicle is where the actual shredding will take place. You should assign a liaison from your company to oversee the work of the shredding company while they are at your location.
• Document removal: Shredding specialists will remove the locked boxes from your location and process them through their shredders in their vehicle. It is your job to ensure that these employees have gone through rigorous background checks and security training to provide you with peace of mind.
• Actual shredding: It depends on the company, but most conscientious companies have rigged their trucks so the shredding can take place behind a security shield where you can watch your documents being shred, but no one can have access to them during the shredding process. It is up to you to supervise this process as much or little as you feel comfortable with.
• Follow-up: Most companies should give some form of certification to let you know that the papers they removed from your premises were destroyed. Although not a legal document, this certificate can be referred to should you have to take legal action following a shredding session.

If you are having personal documents shred out of your home, you would not need a locked box from the company beforehand. However, most of the other steps would go similarly, and should still wrap-up with a certificate of destruction.

While most shredding companies will give guarantees for things such as time spent on the job, estimate vs. actual costs and employee security training, they are unable to offer a guarantee that everything you give to them is shredded. Shredding companies are unable to take a complete inventory of the documents you provide to be shredded; therefore there is no way they are able to, in good conscience, say that everything will be destroyed.

This is where a certificate of destruction comes in. While less legally-binding than an actual guarantee, a certificate of destruction provides some peace of mind that the bulk of the material you send to be shredded is being destroyed. Often written in terms of the number of boxes shred, a certificate of destruction will be given to you once your shredding job is completed. If you receive an invoice before the certificate of destruction, you should ask to see the certificate before making any payments.