furniture – Page 3 – Dino's Storage

Canadian Anti-Spam Law Takes Effect July 1

Making sure the people who get your marketing emails have explicitly asked to receive them is best practice anyway. But the Canadian Anti-Spam Law going into effect in Canada on July 1 makes it even more of a necessity. And, yes, it could impact small businesses in the U.S. too — if you email regularly to customers in Canada.

The new legislation is technically designed to protect Canadian citizens against particularly nasty spam messages used for phishing, identity theft and spyware.

Unless you use the proper precautions, your business could be found in violation. And you could be open to penalties of up to $10 million (in Canadian Dollar rates) and even private civil suits. The law applies even if you are located outside of Canada, but send to recipients who access the messages from within Canada.

The law applies to all commercial electronic messages including email, text messages, social media, IM and voice messages. The law is much broader than its U.S counterpart, the CAN-SPAM Act, which has been in effect for a number of years.

The chart at left highlights the differences in the U.S. and Canadian anti-spam laws.

In an email interview with Small Business Trends, Connie Sung Moyle, manager of public relations and digital strategy at San Francisco-based email marketing company VerticalResponse, explained:

“Our customer support team has fielded a few inquiries from customers, and we’re telling them to consult with a legal advisor to make sure they’re fully cooperating with the new law.”

The new regulation gives a three-year grace period for email marketers to obtain permission from recipients they already email inside Canada. After that time the Canadian government will be able to file suit for up to $10 million against violators. Even Canadian citizens will be empowered to bring suit against you and your business for a violation, warns Chandler, Ariz.-based email and sales software services provider Infusionsoft.

In a recent post on the official Infusionsoft blog, product marketing specialist Justin Topliff wrote: “Because it may be difficult to determine which contacts in your database are located in Canada, Infusionsoft encourages you to obtain a double opt-in from your entire database. This is a best practice for email marketing and will ensure you are in total compliance with all Canadian and U.S. spam laws on this issue.”

Meanwhile Constant Contact, the Waltham, Mass.-based company whose online marketing toolkit includes email and other services, says it is focusing on educating customers about the law. Lisa Kember, the company’s Regional Director for Eastern Canada explains: “We are proactively reaching out to our customers-both those in Canada and those that market to Canada-to help guide them through the process of being CASL compliant.”

At Dino’s your security is of utmost importance to us – whether it be your goods in storage or your personal information. We never sell our email lists to anyone else and always treat our customer information with appropriate respect.

What Is Self Storage and Who Uses It?

Self storage offers people a secure place to store possessions they don’t have room for where they live or work, or that they don’t need on a daily basis. At Dino’s Storage we offer storage units ranging room 25 to 300 square feet. Dino’s specializes in providing modern self-storage facilities to customers in our service areas. Our various locations provide a variety of storage opportunities, from outdoor storage for boats and automobiles, to indoor storage for general items, to climate controlled storage for your special keepsakes.

While there have always been people or businesses willing to rent space to others for temporary storage, America’s first commercially viable storage operation wasn’t founded until the early 1900s, by Martin Bekins. His company, founded in Sioux City, Iowa, in 1891, served the storage needs of families who were moving west and eventually became the well-known Bekins Moving & Storage Company.

It wasn’t until the 1960s that the modern self storage industry as we know it today came into being, according to a New York Times article by Jon Mooallem. For the two decades that followed, Mooallem writes, “storage remained a low-profile industry. For the most part, storage units were meant to temporarily absorb the possessions of those in transition: moving, marrying or divorcing or dealing with a death in the family.”

Not much has changed since then, except we tend to do more moving, marrying, divorcing and dealing inherited stuff than ever before. Consequently, the self storage industry has grown to meet the demand.

So who uses these self storage units? A great many of them are rented by individuals. According to the Self Storage Association, one out of every 10 households in the country rents a self storage unit, while businesses account for 30 percent of self storage customers.

Individuals put everything in self storage from holiday decorations to seasonal clothing, sporting equipment, furniture and vehicles. Businesses use self storage for documents, excess office equipment and furniture, tools, inventory and supplies. Unless it violates the terms of the facility (ammunition, perishable items and live animals are a few of the commonly restricted items), it can and is being stored.

When you rent self storage space, there’s a contract involved, written by lawyers. The SSA defines self-storage as “the term applied to facilities offering rental on a month-to-month basis where the tenant applies his lock and has sole access to his unit.” That protects the self storage facility from creating a condition called bailment, whereby it would assume responsibility for the care, custody or control of a customer’s goods. Unlike a dry cleaner, for instance, who might be liable for burning a hole in that cashmere sweater you dropped off, the self storage facility has no responsibility for the care of your stuff, other than what’s stipulated in the rental contract.

You are responsible for the insurance on and the care of your own stuff. And once you’ve signed the contract, the storage facility owners won’t enter your unit unless they have really good, legally defensible, reason to think you’re violating the terms, which will stipulate materials you can’t store and activities you can’t conduct from the rental unit.

TEMPERATURE CONTROL / CLIMATE CONTROL / HUMIDITY CONTROL-WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

The world of public storage is changing; and just as with everything else, you now have multiple choices. It can be hard to know what you need if you don’t know what it all means. Temperature control and climate control are basically the same thing. Many people make the mistake of thinking climate control means humidity control; but they are actually two different things.

Climate controlled storage spaces (also known as “temperature controlled” ) are cooled in the summer and heated in the winter. Severe hot or cold weather can damage items in storage units over a period of time. Things like wood furniture, electronics & media, wax, vinyl records, appliances, photos, & paintings tend to warp, crack, split, discolor. Most climate control facilities maintain a steady temperature of 50-80 degrees. As a general rule, the temperature in a climate-controlled storage unit should not fall below freezing in the winter or rise above 90 degrees in the summer. If the temperature in the region you live exceeds 90 degrees in the summer but does not freeze in the winter, air-conditioning would be a viable option to consider. Same with only extreme cold temperatures – a heated storage unit would work well. If your area experiences both extreme hot and cold temperatures, climate control is a definite must.

Humidity controlled storage spaces control and reduce humidity. Moisture and mold are two of the leading causes of damage. The best way to protect against humidity is to keep the air from going stale. Humidity controlled facilities are equipped with humidifiers that constantly circulate the air and reduce the amount of actual water vapor. Humidity is measured by percent. Between 25% – 45% is dry and 50% – 75% is normal. Most humidity controlled facilities keep the environment at no less than 40% and no more than 70%. This is the perfect choice of storage environments if you are storing musical instruments, fine furniture, electronics & media, paintings, fabrics, photos, irreplaceable items like precious family heirlooms or memorabilia, business documents and papers. It is especially important to choose this type of storage facility if you live in an area which has moderate to high humidity levels combined with high and or low temperatures. This is because the damaging effects of extreme temperatures on your belongings are multiplied when moisture is in the air as well.

Dino’s Storage facilities offer the comfort of climate control with the benefits of humidity control in one space. So you can rest assured that your valuables are secure in the best storage environment available.