Moving Scam
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The Moving Industry was deregulated with the Household Goods Transportation Act of 1980. This Act allowed interstate movers to issue binding or fixed estimates for the first time. Doing so opened the door to thousands of new moving companies to enter the industry. This forced an incredible amount of competition and soon movers were no longer competing on services but on price. As competition drove prices lower and decreased what were already slim profit margins, rogue movers began hijacking freight as part of a new moving scam.
There are many versions to the moving scam but the basic scam takes place as follows. A prospective client contacts a moving company and requests a cost estimate. In today's market this often happens online via moving directories or brokers. These moving brokers are often salesmen prone to quoting "low ball" prices with no room for the actual movers to provide a quality service.
Once the scam moving company has secured your move by providing a non binding estimate they will arrive to pack and deliver your goods. Often the scam movers use deceptive pricing or weight measurements including prices based on cubic feet of space used in the moving truck. After packing and loading, the client is informed that their goods went over the expected cubic foot allotment and "reserved space" in the truck was used which will now have to be paid for at a substantially higher rate. Often rogue movers will not inform a client of these discrepancies until the client's goods are in transit. The new price rates can be 4 or 5 times higher than the original estimates. The scam movers know that most people will be forced to pay these exorbitant rates based on their need for the personal effects which may now be anywhere.
Currently the moving industry is overseen by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), part of the Federal Department of Transportation (DOT). Only a small staff (fewer than 20 people) is available to patrol thousands of moving companies, making enforcement difficult.
