Keith
There has been a lot of discussion over past years on the US based RECMGMT-L
list about these 'hostage' fees. You might get some inspiration from there.
http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html for more information.
I am not in any way familiar with UK law (other than the fact that
Australian law is based roughly on it), but I would have thought that if
nothing was specified in the contract, then the vendor cannot reasonably
charge you this extra fee.
I would certainly question the concept of it being "extra work involved in
pulling from storage a greater number of boxes per day than would normally
be expected". I assume that in all likelihood at least some of your boxes
are located in close proximity to each other - that should make picking the
boxes less difficult than having to pick the same number of boxes in random
locations (but of course, that is just a guess). Pulling the boxes and put
them on a pallet would seem to be less difficult than pulling the boxes and
subjecting them to their 'normal' handling.
If they want to be bloody minded, and you wanted to be difficult, what is to
stop you withdrawing whatever quantity of boxes the vendor deems
'reasonable' every day? In a random order, maybe? It would take you a while
to retrieve all your boxes, but they would have no justification for
charging you any extra.
John Lovejoy
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These are my own views, no one else's
-----Original Message-----
From: The UK Records Management mailing list
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Keith Simmons
Sent: Thursday, September 23, 2004 1:47 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Permanent Removal Fee aka Exceptional Handling Charge
Has any subscriber any experience in this area that may provide guidance,
please feel free to reply to me directly off list if you prefer.
Having reached the end of a tender for off-site storage in which they
failed, our incumbent supplier has proposed an exceptional charge per box
that is equivalent to a Permanent Removal Fee. This is not included in our
contract and was not included or agreed when an amendment to the contract
was made at the time the incumbent acquired our previous supplier.
The proposed fee of £1.35 is in addition to the normal pulling/handling
charge of £0.43 making a total of £1.78 per box to terminate the contract.
The fee has been described by the incumbent as covering the extra work
involved in pulling from storage a greater number of boxes per day than
would normally be expected in the day to day management our contract up to
now.
What we need to know is:
- is this now common practice across all suppliers?
- how strong is the case against such a fee i.e. how successful have list
subscribers to been in challenging these fees?
- What level of fee can be considered reasonable for the actual extra costs
incurred during the bulk uplift from an incumbent supplier.
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