Frequently Asked Questions

General Questions

What we shred?

Price

Information security

Destruction laws

Office shredder warning

The cost of office shredding

What we shred?

You say you don’t have much confidential information that needs to be shredded? Think again! Here is just a partial list of the type of information that absolutely must be shredded.

Account records and ledgers

Disciplinary reports & promotions

New product information

Activity sheets

Educational reports

Payroll documents

Advertising

Expense reports

Performance appraisals

Applications

Financial statements

Personnel files

Appraisals

Forecasts

Plastic credit & ID cards

Bank statements

Formulas, product plans & tests

Research & development reports

Bids and quotes

General service information

Sales forecasts

Budgets

Health and safety reports

Specification drawings

Business plans

Internal Reports

Strategic reports

Canceled checks

Legal Documents

Strategies

Cell phones

Lottery tickets

Supplier purchase orders

Client lists

Magnetic media

Supplier reports

Computers and hard drives

Maps and blueprints

Supplier specifications

Contact lists

Marketing plans

Test scores and class rosters

Corporate tax records

Medical records

Training information

Correspondence

Microfilm and microfiche

Treatment Programs

Customer records

Price

Some shredding companies will quote you a low, low price and then slam you with hidden fees like fuel surcharges, security fees and pick up fees.  Other shredding companies charge by the minute to shred your documents.  So you’re actually paying them to go slow.   Get an exact quote in writing and always ask if there are any additional charges.
Marshall Shredding provides our services for a low fee, with no hidden charges.

Information Security

There are two types of shredding services.  On-site shredding means all confidential materials are shredded on-site, at your location.  Off-site shredding means that all material is brought back to the company’s facility for shredding.  If your organization requires that you witness the shredding process, then you should choose on-site shredding.  If you’re looking for a more cost-effective option, then off-site shredding is your best choice.  


Marshall Shredding offers highly secure, on-site shredding services.

The National Association for Information Destruction (NAID) is the watchdog of the shredding industry.  They act as an independent auditor, checking a shredding company’s compliance in 22 critical areas, including everything from shred size to employee background checks.  NAID awards their highest rating, “AAA Certified,” to only a select few shredding companies that offer the highest level of information security.  In fact, of the 74 shredding companies operating in Texas, only 24 have been AAA Certified by NAID.  But buyer beware!  Many unscrupulous shredding companies will claim to be AAA NAID Certified just to get your business.  Check their website for the NAID AAA Certified logo as proof of their standing.

Marshall Shredding is AAA NAID Certified. – Click on the image below to verify our standing

It’s not enough for a shredding company to just shred documents. It’s equally important that they train your staff to protect your confidential information.

Marshall Shredding first audits how your organization handles confidential data and then we provide information security training for your entire staff; all at no extra charge.

Destruction laws

The Fair and Accurate Credit Transaction Act (FACTA) requires that any individual or business that maintains personal consumer information must take reasonable care to protect against unauthorized access to this information, and they must also destroy personal consumer information before it is discarded.  Violation of FACTA, which went into effect in 2005, can mean fines and penalties of up to $2,500 for each consumer record compromised.
For more information about FACTA click here.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) sets national standards for the protection of personal health information.  HIPAA, which went into effect in 1996, requires all healthcare providers, including any organization that transmits personal health information, to maintain the confidentiality of this information and to destroy the information before it is discarded.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) sets national standards for the protection of personal health information.  HIPAA, which went into effect in 1996, requires all healthcare providers, including any organization that transmits personal health information, to maintain the confidentiality of this information and to destroy the information before it is discarded.

The Identity Theft Enforcement and Protection Act (the “ITEP Act”) , mandates that businesses have a legal duty to protect and safeguard sensitive personal information.
Similar to the Gramm-Leach Bliley Act, the ITEP Act requires businesses that collect or maintain sensitive personal information in the regular course of business to implement and maintain reasonable procedures and corrective measures to protect and safeguard sensitive personal information from unlawful use or disclosure. Further more , the ITEP Act includes a “Dumpster Diving”provision where companies are required to destroy customer records no longer in use by shredding, erasing modifying the records to make the information unreadable or undecipherable.
The ITEP Act not only allows the Attorney General to seek permanent injunction, but also exposes defendants to a civil penalty of at least 2,000 and up to $50,00 against each defendant.
For more information click here.

Think a security breach can’t happen to your organization?  Think again!   Since they began tracking security breaches in Jan. 2005, PrivacyRights.Org reports that over 218 million confidential files, in every imaginable industry, have been compromised!
For a comprehensive list of these information security breaches, click here.

5 Reasons You Should Dump Your Office Shredder And Hire Us

Most office shredding machines shred paper using a cross-cut or ribbon cut method. So when these strips of paper are discarded or recycled, “dumpster divers” just sort through the trash and reassemble these paper strips. This gives them easy access to confidential information you thought was destroyed. In fact this form of information fraud is so common, now there’s software available to help these thieves scan and reassemble this information.

Marshall Shredding uses advanced shredding technology to produce a confetti-like output that is small and unreadable. And since there are hundreds of pounds of documents from numerous clients, all mixed together, our shredded material is impossible to reassemble.

Small businesses that operate an office shredder spend, on average, 15 minutes of staff time each and every day, shredding confidential documents. When you consider employee wages and benefits, then factor in depreciation and maintenance costs on the shredder, it costs (on average) about $95 per month to operate an office shredder. That’s nearly twice as much as our regularly scheduled, on-site shredding pickup service.

Irregular shredding practices. That’s the charge an auditor or lawyer can make when they discover your organization uses an office shredder. Why? Because in-house shredding programs don’t adhere to a regular shredding schedule and they don’t provide adequate documentation of what’s been shredded, when it’s been shredded or by whom. So when a question arises as to when and why a particular piece of information was shredded, organizations without documentation are susceptible to severe fines.

Marshall Shredding offers a variety of regularly scheduled shredding services and a Certificate of Destruction to provide documented evidence of every single shred.

In the last five years there have been more than 50 reports of injuries from office shredders, including lacerations and lost fingers. And while these cases are isolated, office shredders have sharp blades that can injure you if you’re not careful. Additionally, office shredders produce paper, plastic and metal dust fragments that, left unchecked, can get into the air ducts and create a fire hazard.

Marshall Shredding’s shredding service means you’ll never have to deal with sharp blades or dust fragments again.

Even though “shredder mess” is not a risk factor, it’s still something that you’ll have to deal with if you use an office shredder. Fragments of paper will fall onto the floor while dust builds up on the shredder, the shredder table and the floor.

Marshall Shredding eliminates shredder mess caused by office shredders.

Understanding the Costs

If you’re a business professional who thinks that “feeding the office shredder” is a cost effective way to protect your clients, customers or patients from identity theft and the unauthorized disclosure of private information…then I’d like to challenge you to calculate your own costs, to see just how much money “do it yourself shredding” is costing you.

To illustrate, let’s take a look at a typical business office. When they decided to start shredding they purchased a shredder at an office supply store for $185. The chart below shows how much it cost this business to operate their office shredder.
Calculate your cost here.

In our example, there are five employees that use the office shredder during the course of a day, each averaging about three minutes of daily shred time or 15 minutes total per day for the entire office. (Remember shred time is not just the amount of time the shredding machine manufacture claims it takes to shred paper. One must also include the time to sort the documents, walk from the work area to the shredder, pick up and straighten the paper, feed the paper into the shredder and clean up any paper residue and when necessary, dispose of the shredded paper.)

Since the average hourly wage of their employees, plus benefits is $16.19. The total monthly labor cost to operate an office shredder is $87.71. Factor in depreciation and maintenance costs (shredding blades must be sharpened) the total cost of operating their office shredder is $97.58 per month.

Now your costs will be different based upon how much you shred, your average hourly wage, initial cost of the shredder, etc. But the fact is that using an office shredder costs twice as much as a monthly pickup by a shredding service…and saving money isn’t even the best reason to use a shredding service. (To learn how your shredding service is putting you at risk, click here.)

There’s never been a better time to switch from using your office shredder to our regularly scheduled shredding service.
30 Days of Free Shredding (New customers only)

We’ll give you 30 days of our regularly scheduled shredding services, for FREE!

Monthly shredding services cost far less than you’d think.  Click here for a Free Quote.

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