Fellowes P700: A Pain in the... Office.

Author's Rating:

Pros: Space-efficient, shreds one or two pages quickly.

Cons: Noisy, jams all the time and very hard to fix.

The Bottom Line: 
This shredder is very unreliable. It jams too easily and is a constant aggravation.

Author's Review
I'm used to heavy-duty shredding, so when I started working in an office that didn't even have a paper shredder... well, I was mortified! Ok, not really, but I did recommend that we buy one. Unfortunately, I ended up having no say in the purchase decision and we ended up with this one.

To be fair to the purchaser, it seemed like a good decision. We don't do a great deal of shredding, but at times I end up with documents that must be destroyed. If you tell a client your office doesn't have a paper shredder, but you can tear that stuff up yourself, you end up looking highly unprofessional. Trust me!

What do I like about this shredder?
The Fellowes P700 has always done a great job of shredding the credit card applications I bring from home. When you're only shredding a page or two at a time, it works very quickly and without any problems. I always enjoy the little icons warning you not to stick your hand or your tie in the machine -very cute.

What don't I like?
First of all, the sound: This guy is very noisy and when you're shredding more that three pages at a time, it starts to rumble loudly and it sounds like it's haunted. There are forward, off and reverse modes. The reverse mode does not work properly and instead of reversing continuously, thus allowing you to remove the paper, it only reverses about an inch and then stops. Once you put something in there, you can't get it back out; I suppose this is a good security feature, but hardly one that is helpful if you make a mistake.
Worst of all, however, are the paper jams. My shredder is currently not in use because of a particularly bad one. This shredder can handle up to seven sheets at a time, though when you get to seven it makes the aforementioned ghost sounds and operates very slowly. I must admit that I was guess-timating the other day (who has time to count out sheets?) but I think I put around seven sheets in there. the problem was that the sheets went in on a bit of an angle, folded over on each other, and now my machine doesn't work.
Every other shredder I've used, when it encounters a jam, allows you to press the reverse button to free it. This one just stops working altogether. Again, a security feature, I would assume -in case some joker does put his tie in there. I thought I had cleared the jam, but the machine still would not work! Fixing this monster has become an ongoing project and meanwhile, I have to send things out to be shred. What an inconvenience!