Moving Scams in the News
Most people aren’t experienced with protecting themselves from moving scams, so moving companies with ill intent have plenty of victims from which to choose. And in some especially frustrating cases, even people who do their homework get ripped off. That’s because moving scams constitute big business and moving scamcompanies are good at preying on consumers when they’re vulnerable, as this true story shows:
An Indianapolis resident who was moving to Phoenix did plenty of research on moving companies before she made her choice. She checked with the American Moving and Storage Association and the Better Business Bureau, and both gave the company a clean bill of health. Unbeknownst to either organization, though, the company had recently been sold to a company whose only intent was to perpetrate moving scams on unsuspecting consumers.
Federal law mandates that moving companies must identify all the parties involved in a move beforehand, but the resident wasn’t told until everything was loaded that the company had been sold and the truck belonged to another company. She was then asked to sign a contract but after she did the driver refused to give her a copy. Dismissing these details because the truck was already loaded and she had done thorough advance research; she didn’t call the police as her instincts told her she should.
The result was that the company refused to deliver her possessions until she paid $6,000, which was well over the $2,400 she originally agreed to pay. She filed a complaint with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which governs moving companies. They informed her that she was within her rights, but that they were too understaffed to do anything about it. Arizona’s Department of Weights and Measures (ADWM), which has a zero-tolerance policy for moving scams, was willing to help but the moving van had to enter the state first. But that wasn’t going to happen because the moving scam company had deposited her possessions in an Ohio storage facility, claiming "Moving companies never go directly to their destination. They always drop off the goods at a storage facility." Even though industry experts say this is untrue, the company refused to make the delivery.
But the resident soldiered on, seeking both recovery of her possessions and justice. The moving scam company eventually tired of the heat generated by her complaints to the ADWM, the FBI and Phoenix police and offered to give back her $1,200 deposit. She was still back at square one though: she had to find a mover to get her possessions out of storage and to her new home on Phoenix.
She learned several things from her experience that apply to anyone who hires a moving company:
- Check to see if the carrier’s license matches the company name. If it doesn’t, go elsewhere.
- Stick with reputable moving companies that have reputations to uphold and therefore don’t get involved in moving scams.
- Don’t allow your possessions to be loaded if the name on the truck varies from that of the company you hired.
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