Recently Iron Mountain threatened to auction off all of my 250 boxes stored at one of their facilities. These boxes include financial records including social security numbers of employees of the defunct company that was a client of Iron Mountain. When the company I work for collapsed in the economic crisis of 2009 as the owners wife I immediately called Iron Mountain and asked to get our boxes released. They informed me that I was not on the contract and could not authorize this. I explained that there were no employees left at this company and I was VP and married to the owner. I got lots of rudeness and uncooperation. I sent a faxed letter from the sole owner requesting that they release our boxes immediately. I was told not to contact them for three weeks while they processed my request. Three weeks later I called and they said they had NOT gotten the fax and would need a fax from the employee who opened the account. I explained the situation and that the company was closing and that we would not be able to incur any more costs. At that point there was some relatively small amount owed so I needed to quickly shut off this expenditure. Again I sent a fax from the owner and was told not to contact them for three more weeks. When I did I was told the same thing and that they would contact me, etc. At this point I was closing a 4500 square foot office and trying to provide for my family in this crisis. This went on every three weeks and finally I got someone to acknowlege that I had called. Though they gave me the run around and told me to call back in three weeks while they "worked on this". No matter how many times I spoke with someone about the urgency and severity of this problem no one could take any action always deferring this to a superviser and shutting the door to any effective problem solving. Finally mid summer (six months after first speaking with someone) bill collectors were calling and I explained that I had been trying to remove the boxes and not incur anymore bills. Never did I speak with anyone who could take action. Eventually a law firm began calling me in a mocking tone taunting me by saying I "wanted our records destroyed". I politely talked to the law firm's associate and explained that I actually wanted to just remove the boxes but I was unable to make any payments due to this catastrophic financial collapse of the business. He tried to agitate me with all kinds of methods. He then told me that he was going to auction the records under the warehouse abandonment laws similar to those at a mini warehouse. In reality, I have no abandoned these financial records with employees social security numbers. The company is simply unable to pay the compounding charges by Iron Mountain's neglect in helping me remove the boxes in a timely fashion.
Good customer service would compell Iron Mountain to admit that in this case the bill is uncollectable and to halt the "bleeding". I will run a multi-million dollar company again but this time I will never use Iron Mountain since they have been so irresponsible and difficult in my time of trouble. I've had many clients in the past that went into trouble and sometimes a company needs to look at the big picture and do the right thing. Auctioning off social security numbers to identity thieves is not the right thing. So if you have anything confidential do not store it at Iron Mountain Records Storage lest something happen and you will lose protection of these records.
Tonight someone from Iron Mountain showed up at MY HOME!!! I was not at home but it is ironic since no one knows where they have my records. I was told that all records are held at a secret location and that they will be transferred out of state and auctioned. I will be filing complaints with the BBB, the Chamber of Commerce and anyone I can think of. Protect yourself and your employees. Store you records in a metal building from the local garden center in the middle of a ghetto and you will be safer than storing them at Iron Mountain.