In any business office, you will find rows of filing cabinets, especially when the business is very paper based. Even scanning all your required paperwork will need safe storage. As the business owner, the onus lies on you to ensure that you keep proper documentation of your operations, from billing, customer contacts to mailing lists. Once these important documentation go down in an accidental fire, the survival rate of your business as an ongoing concern will be largely impacted. Indeed, you need to give your business the rightful protection it needs, that is, fireproof file cabinets.
Not only does your business continuity planning require you to protect your documents with fire proof filing cabinets, some insurance companies too require that you have them in order to be insured. Under such circumstances, regardless if you are strapped by a tight budget, you should still be protecting your business but with a potentially viable alternative. You need not spend a fortune on new ones as you can opt of used or refurbished ones. They come at a fraction of the cost compared to the new ones.
While it is not a bad idea to buy used fire proof filing cabinets, there are, however, precautions that you should take when buying them. Check out with a reputed used office furniture dealer to prevent substandard products. The key is to find used ones that have never been through a fire. Otherwise there will be not much use in fire prevention. The main reason being that there is a special type of liquid that manufacturers use which keeps the interior temperature low. This liquid will oxidize and disappear in a fire and even if the cabinet is refurbished the fire resistant effect is greatly affected.
Hence, you may opt for used fireproof file cabinets but only if you are convinced and satisfied with the reputed dealer being able to provide you evidence that the cabinets are still robust and authentic.