Safe Talk

Do you own a hotel? Are you concerned about the safety and security of your guests? I really must say Thank You for being a good business owner. It’s always so nice when people take care of you, especially hotel owners because there is nothing better than a great getaway in a great hotel, and nothing worse than staying in an awful hotel and wishing you were home with your family. Well, did you know that here at Safe and Vault Store we have a whole section of our website devoted to hotel safes? That’s right, you can do your research, cost compare, and even buy online. We’re like a one-stop shop for you and your hotel. And I promise your guests will thank you for it!

We have safes starting at $77 all the way up to the crème-de-la-crème at $257. But seriously, look at this baby! And check out these specs! Is she not a beaut?!

Perma-Vault Hotel Guest Room Safe

Features:
• Heavy gauge steel construction.
• Attractive powder coat finish.
• Pre-drilled holes permit bolting to any structurally sound surface.
• Designed specifically for laptop/notebook computer storage.
• Foam padded insert for added protection of contents.
• Two year electronic lock warranty.
• User friendly two to six digit PIN operation.
• Optional: ADA pedestal available. (Call for price quote)
• Optional: Wall mounting shelf bracket. (Call for price quote)

Knox Digital Lock Technology Features:
• Easy to read backlit display.
• Automatic prior PIN delegation.
• Designed for convenient operation.
• Large soft touch keypad with liquid display.
• User prompts.
• Master key override.

We’re all about home and family security here at Safe and Vault Store and as the world becomes more technologically advanced, these safety concerns are migrating to the web. We’ve talked a bit about online security in terms of identity theft but now we’re focusing on teaching your young children about social media security. Today children use the web for just about everything from chatting, playing games, studying and researching, blogging, or facebooking. It is important as a parent that you are clear with your kids what is and is not proper behavior online—sending a clear message, having clear boundaries, and knowing right from wrong will go a long way in preventing problems.

The folks at Microsoft have put together some points for talking to kids about social media security and we want to share that here with you.

Communicate with your children about their experiences. Encourage your children to tell you if something they encounter on one of these sites makes them feel anxious, uncomfortable or threatened. Stay calm and remind your kids they are not in trouble for bringing something to your attention. Let them know you will work with them to help resolve the situation for a positive outcome.

Set your own house Internet rules. As soon as your children begin to use the Internet on their own, it is a good idea to come up with a list of rules for using the Internet that everyone can agree on. These rules should include whether your children can use social websites and how they can use them. For more information on setting rules, see Using family contracts to help protect your kids online.

Ensure your kids follow age limits on the site. The recommended age for signing up for social websites is usually 13 and over. If your children are under the recommended age for these sites, do not let them use the sites. It is important to remember that you cannot rely on the services themselves to keep your underage child from signing up.

Educate yourself about the site. Evaluate the sites that your child plans to use and make sure both you and your child understand the privacy policy and the code of conduct. Find out if the site monitors content that people post. Also, review your child’s page periodically.

To read more, be sure to check out this website.

As you’ve been perusing our site looking at all our fancy products I’m sure you’ve been wondering how it is that a safe business (where being heavy duty is one of the tenants of a good safe) can operate as an online business. It means that good, fast, and cheap safe delivery was one of the things we had to figure out early and right from the start. We’ve thought about it long and hard and  we have a whole bunch of information for you about our shipping policies:

• Products under 100 pounds are shipped via UPS or a similar ground shipment company. These products will be delivered to your door only (not inside your home or business).
• Products over 100 pounds are shipped by freight truck. Please note that freight truck drivers will pallet jack the product into an overhead door residential garage or overhead door warehouse ONLY. They leave the safe on the pallet. For customers needing inside delivery of your product, through a man-door, we offer an optional Inside Delivery service for an additional fee. For more information please see our Inside Delivery Information.
• LTL freight truck drivers will NOT deliver to homes with excessively steep driveways. Anything more than a 2% grade will require White Glove Inside Delivery. Truck Drivers will NOT deliver to excessively long driveways, driveways with turns or vegetation and trees obstrucing the driveway.
• INSPECTION OF PACKAGING: You must inspect all packaging and note even minor scuffs, scrapes or tears on the Delivery Receipt. Failure to do so will tell the LTL freight company that this shipment is: “All Clear with no damage”. SafeandVaultStore.com cannot file a freight claim if you fail to note any packaging damage on the Delivery Receipt. Any damage would be your responsibility to pay since the packaging damage was not noted on the Delivery Receipt.

As for charges, we have added the cost of delivery into most of the prices of the safes. For those who want “white glove” delivery there is an option for an additional fee at check out.

• Our calculated shipping charges are based on the total weight of the order and the location of the final destination. Other than a few select products, shipping charges include a “handling fee” that is included in the total price of the product.
• Shipping & handling charges do not include inside delivery to your home or business. For customers needing inside delivery of your product, we offer this optional service for an additional fee. For more information please see Inside Delivery.
• The delivery truck driver is responsible for unloading your product at the curbside or in an overhead door garage only (for residential deliveries). Commercial deliveries are made to companies with a commercial loading dock or forklift, or at the curbside if a loading dock is not available. Driver will move pallet inside an overhead door warehouse or overhead door garage. Driveway must be LEVEL or they will not deliver. Excessively long driveways, driveways with turns or trees obstructing the driveway will require White Glove Inside delivery at an additional cost.
• Truck lift gate usage is included in the delivered price for all home deliveries (and businesses without a commercial loading dock). NOTE: Select Sentry/Schwab and FireKing products do NOT include a lift gate fee of $85.00 and $85.00 for Residential Delivery. This is added to your total delivered price at checkout.
• Most residential or commercial addresses are accessible by a large truck (tractor-trailer), but locations that are not accessible, or that require extra handling, may be subject to additional charges. You are responsible for these charges. Examples include: downtown locations where a reasonably close loading zone is unavailable, narrow lanes, alleys or bridges, islands or locations requiring ferry boat transportation, toll-bridges, gated communities restricting trucks, unpaved roads and remote rural locations. Commercial receiving docks shall be elevated at least 4 feet from the ground and allow easy backing and offloading of a tractor-trailer truck. Driveways that are excessively long, driveways with turns, driveways with trees obstructing them.
• If in doubt, call us and we will check with the delivery company prior to quoting any extra delivery charges. We will obtain your approval for additional charges, if applicable.
• We reserve the right to decline orders for which we determine delivery to be impractical.

Detective Kevin Coffey is the founder of Corporate Travel Safety, has some great information to share on travel and how to assess and safety use hotel safes. I found this very valuable and now make sure to check the type of safe I use and always store larger valuables in the front desk safe at the hotel. While none of this is revolutionary, it is common sense solutions to safety concerns.

Do you have any other suggestions for keeping your valuables safe while traveling?

Leaving and securing valuables in your hotel room
• Obviously store any valuables in your in-room safe. Know that before you get to your hotel, in-room safes vary in size and all of your larger valuables like your laptop or tablet may not fit. If you items won’t fit, consider using the hotel front desk guest safes, as many times they are larger.
• Know that in many hotels, the in-room safes are not covered by the hotel’s insurance – some hotel guest contracts state that valuables are only provided insurance coverage when they are only secured at the front desk safe.
• If your room safe won’t hold all of your valuables, and you don’t want to use the front desk safe, their are several different sizes of portable travel safes that a traveler can take with them when on the road. Here are a variety of portable travel safes to consider.
• If you don’t use any type of safe, make sure you bring luggage equipped with locks, so you can secure your valuables inside. Remember out of sight – out of mind.
• Keep luggage without locks zipped closed and out of sight. If you leave your luggage unzipped or open and on your bed or the floor, you invite tampering. Re-pack your luggage daily as extensively as you can and keep it hidden inside a wardrobe, closet or under the bed to lessen the chances of someone finding it and stealing from it.

Hotel Safe Considerations
• Depending on the type and age of your hotel, typically safes which let you select your own combination are safer than room safes with keys that may have had keys copied by dishonest hotel employees.
• Some travelers report that their credit card numbers may have been compromised by someone who may have entered their hotel safe and copied down their numbers. This is very hard to prove. Some travelers place their credit cards in a sealed envelope in their hotel room safe so they can tell if this has occurred.
• Research your hotel online – TripAdvisor.com is a great research site – look for terms such as theft from hotel room safes or related comments. Here is a link to give you an idea of some travelers comments on the theft of items from their hotel safes overseas. Unfortunately in some hotels, dishonest employees use master keys to remove items from your hotel safe when you are away. This tens to be a larger problem outside the United States.
• If you want a higher level of security for your room safe, consider purchasing your own personal hotel safe lock that lets you place your own lock on your safe. Only one hotel safe lock is on the market today to allow you to better safeguard your safe’s valuables.

One of the best uses for safes is the safekeeping of important family and life documents such as marriage certificates, birth and death certificates, home deeds, stock or bond certificates and other important financial documents. Even with the increased digitization of…well, everything it is still important to keep hard copies within easy reach. The major advantage of a home safe over, say, a safety deposit box at a bank or something similar is that these documents are within easy reach twenty-four hours per day. You never know when you’ll have urgent need of a marriage certificate or a bond certificate. What happens when it’s a bank holiday? Or on a Sunday? Or if you can’t quite remember where you put that safety deposit key? Having a home safe alleviates all of these concerns and streamlines your “important document search.”

As I was thinking about this, I realized there sure are a lot of documents that I’d want to keep in a safe at home but I never know exactly how long you are meant to keep things for. Like tax returns? Did you know that you need to keep all tax returns filed for seven years before disposing of them? Well, I’ve come across this handy cheat sheet to help you keep track of what you need to keep track of

Document————– How long to keep
Birth and death certificates—Forever.
Estate-planning documents—Forever. (Unless your executor knows how to get into your safe, also make sure he or she and your lawyer have copies.)
Life-insurance policies——-Until the term of coverage ends.
Savings bonds ————-Until you cash them in at maturity (30 years in the case of Series EE bonds).
Stock certificates ——–Until you sell the stock or have it converted to direct or street-name registration.
Tax returns ————At least seven years.

One of the toughest things about travel is knowing what to do with your valuables in a hotel room? Sure there are small safes in most hotel rooms but these are usually not large enough to hold very much. I always struggle to make a choice about what I should put in this small safe and what I should leave out and trust that the hotel is safe. For example, the last hotel I was in had such a small safe that there wasn’t enough room for my computer! So what did I do? I reluctantly placed my passport, my extra cash, and my keys in the safe and tucked my computer and other electrical equipment in my luggage. Thankfully the hotel staff were honest and nothing was missing from my stash. Usually, unless robbers know you and are looking for a specific valuable, they are unlikely to dig through too many different places.

At their core, robbers and home invaders are opportunistic – if there is an open window they’ll go through it; if they have to pick a lock or break a window, they most likely won’t. The same goes for leaving valuables around your house or hotel room. By tucking your valuables away (always best in a safe but hidden is a second option if no safe is available), you deter robbers by taking away the opportunist element. Just making it that much more difficult for potential robbers will often save you and your valuables.

If you are really concerned about your valuables in a hotel room, you can see if the front desk has a larger safe in the back of the hotel and ask that your valuables be placed there. Many hotels will be happy to help you.

I hope this has helped alleviate some of your worries while you travel. Do you have any good travel stories? We’d love to hear them!

I, along with 24 million other Zappos customers, got an email yesterday noting that my personal information may have been compromised by hackers. These large-scale online data security breaches seem to be increasingly common. These breaches underscore the fact that we all need to be vigilant and pro-active when it comes to what information we are willing to share in the online space, who we share our personal information with, and what security measures we trust. This breach has really caused me to reflect on just how much of my personal information is out there on the internet—there’s Zappos, Amazon, Target, and different Etsy sellers I’ve bought stuff from. All my banks hold my information online as do some of my doctor’s offices who keep online records. In this increasingly connected world, are we making ourselves vulnerable to data hacks?

So much of our time is focused on offline security (we are a safe and vault store afterall), but it’s important to remember that there are certain precautions that we must take online as well. I’ve compiled a few helpful, if commonsense, hints to help make sure you aren’t the victim of an online attack.

1) Remember who you’ve shared your information with – and be selective about sharing.
2) Don’t store your credit card information online, even with online sellers that you trust.
3) Don’t put more information out there than required. Keep your Social Security Number to yourself, consider using only one credit card for online purchases
4) Make sure you only make purchases with sellers who take security measures – VeriSign is one of these online security companies that many sellers use.
5) Use your head—if a situation feels uncomfortable, go with your gut.

Did you know that not only are we one of the best online safe and vault sellers, but we actually have a used and outlet store section where you can score a great deal without compromising on the quality or protection of your safe. Talk about a winning combo. Given the current state of the economy and pressures that we all face every day (new homes, new babies, new jobs, and not enough money for any of it!), we are all looking for a good deal. We may go to second hand websites like eBay or Craigslist but tell me, what do these sellers know about safety and security? Well…very little.

We are a reputable, family company who, for over 60 years, have been selling the highest qualities safes and vaults to the public. When we say “we ensure the quality of all used safes we sell” you better believe we mean it! Now you can rest assured that you are purchasing from a company with positive values, integrity, and a promise of excellence while still getting that great deal. And no longer do you need to compromise on the security and safety of your home or business.

I welcome you to browse our used and outlet safes listings and see for yourself. And if the type of safe you are interested in isn’t available, feel free to give us a call and talk to one of our representatives about our incoming inventory. You never know, maybe we have just what you need in the warehouse and it just hasn’t made it on to the web yet.

Well, it’s officially 2012! Did you know that January is a great time to reassess your security needs? To help you out, I thought I’d throw together a brief overview of our very comprehensive website!

Biometric Safes: biometric safes are controlled by your own unique biometric features, such as your fingerprints, voice pitch, or iris. These safes are great for keeping items that you need to access frequently in your home or office.

Burglar Fire Safes: There are fire safes and there are burglar safes and then there are burglar fire safes. The best of both worlds, these safes are not only fire resistant (make sure to check the fire rating before purchase) but are also make to the specifications required of burglar safes.

Cash Boxes: Do you work in a high cash business such as a retail shop or restaurant? Well…cash boxes and Cash Dispensing Safes are essential items for your business. There is no reason to keep yourself vulnerable to theft if there are such simple and easy solutions.

Custom Safes: Not only do we sell the very best safes available anywhere, but we are safe professionals through and through. Contact us to ask about custom safes if your needs exceed what is available online. We can build safes to just about any specifications that you can think up – and we’ll even help organize delivery and installation!

Data Media Safes: As our business and home habits change, so do our safe needs. Today more and more sensitive material is being held and stored digitally. Is your digital data secured properly? Did you know that CDs and other data devices cannot be stored in a normal fire safe?

Fireproof Safes: Did you know that most burglar safes are NOT fireproof? Fireproof safes are great for safeguarding home deeds, marriage certificates, birth certificates and other precious mementos. Make sure to check the fire-rating on any safe you consider. Ratings range from 1-4 hours generally.

Laptop Safes: life in college can be tons of fun until something gets stolen. Advise your college-bound kids to invest in a laptop safe to make sure to minimize the potential for dorm theft.

The faltering world economy has done a lot to change the world—it’s now tougher to find jobs, apartments and homes are more difficult to afford and homes are now harder to finance. Many students are opting to stay in school for longer and in turn are taking out more and more student debt. The world is a vastly different place than it was 5 or 10 years ago. And one of the main differences is where investors are choosing to put their money—suddenly stock equity is no place for safe investments and bonds are yielding very low rates. So what do prudent investors do? Do they keep their money in their savings accounts (which, by the way, are now earning negligible interest themselves) or do they find alternative vehicles to earn what they can? Well, today I read an interesting article about some investors who are doing just that.

Today, in this crazy world, more and more investors are investing in precious metals such as gold and silver but also, increasingly investing in undervalued estate jewelry. That’s right – grandma’s old diamond right may have a second life in the portfolio of an investor.

“Jewellery from the 1950s and 60s is less in vogue. The most sought-after pieces currently are those from the1920s and 1930s – the Art Deco period,” says Francois Curiel, international head of jewellery at Christie’s auction house.

“Lately there have been less of these pieces on the market, and as a result, the value has shot up to almost double or triple estimates,” he adds.

This also means that many people have need of high quality safes to keep their investments in. What would you do with a highly valuable ring or bracelet? I hope if you are thinking about getting in on this game, that you’re also in the market for a great safe!

Are you considering alternative investments? Do you feel comfortable with your investment portfolio? What about your current safe?

If you are interested in learning more about these alternative investments please see the Financial Times article.