Tesco 5 Sheet Cross Cut Paper Shredder - (Silver)

We paid the grand sum of just £15 for our Tesco 5 Paper Shredder a while back. We bought it as we don't want to become the victims of ID theft again. This happened to us last year and it caused us as a family a great deal of stress and anxiety. We had just been throwing our receipts into the bin (after tearing them up) and we have no idea how it happened but someone managed to get hold of my credit card details and proceeded to order various items such as mobile phones and TV's and a couple of games consoles. One mobile phone was delivered to m own address for some reason and both me and my other half knew neither of us had ordered one so we contacted the credit card helpdesk and they told us what else had been ordered and delivered to an address in Newton Aycliffe (to a warehouse) and so we stopped the card. We had a terrible job trying to recoup or money but after that fiasco we decided to buy a shredder.

This shredder was bought as it looked the best one for the smallest cost. This is a 5 paper shredder as the name suggests. Though the paper has to be average sized paper and NOT card as it will only take three pieces of card max or it will jam and you will have to press reverse.

This shredder is noisy to an extent, though not too bad. You have to talk a bit louder if you hold a conversation and switch the volume up on the TV if you are shredding in the living room but it's not too bad noise-wise.

It has a large 7-litre capacity wire basket but it has dented at the side slightly so it's not that great as far as durability is concerned. It has an auto reverse button on the top and shredding the paper is a doddle. I actually find it quite therapeutic and if I'm feeling a bit stressed I just shred a bit to help me relax. I tend to keep all my bills and receipts etc and juts shred them all together in one big batch at the end of the month.

The Tesco 5 Paper Shredder shreds the paper in a cross cut fashion so there is no way even the most devious of potential ID hackers would be able to stick my bills or receipts back together again, especially as I pulp the lot afterwards in the plastic bin out the back and use this as compost for the garden. They'd have to be a magician to be able to decipher anything from that lot.

The only downside for me personally with this machine is the fact that it gets hot quite quickly and I find if I have been shredding for a while I have to leave it to cool down for five or ten minutes. Once cooled it's fine and ready to go again.

Overall it's a good quality shredder I'm pleased with though.