Why You Might Need to Report Moving Issues

When you’re moving, a moving company typically agrees to charge a specific price in writing to move your belongings from one place to another during a specific time period and potentially to store them in the interim. While most companies play by the rules, here are some of the ways that this arrangement can go awry:

1. Theft or Loss of Goods in Transit
   
   If your mover is greedy, he or she might steal some of your more valuable or desirable goods while moving them. Alternatively, incompetence or accidents can result in the loss of some of your goods in the move: they could simply fall out of the truck, be left somewhere, or be sent the wrong place and maybe even lost for good.
   

2. Moving Fraud-Price Increase
   
   If you and your mover agreed to a price in a contract for an interstate move, but then the mover claims that your goods are “overweight,” you may be charged significantly more money, even two or three times the original amount, to retrieve your goods.
   

3. Unreasonable Moving Time/Extra Storage Costs
   
   Sometimes moving takes longer than expected, but if it has been weeks longer than initially agreed to, you’ll definitely be missing your goods, and you could not have been reasonably expected to agree to that kind of delay. On top of that, you may be charged for storage during these delays, which you certainly never agreed to cover.

Why It’s Hard to Get Just Treatment

Movers have you in a very vulnerable position when they possess all of your goods and can demand that you pay all kinds of fees to get them back, or when they even lose your possessions after you’ve paid their fee. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration exists to handle situations like this, but its bureaucracy can be intimidating and confusing for average citizens to handle.

DoNotPay can help you get your money back, retrieve your belongings, gain compensation for your lost belongings, or fight additional charges. We’ll first send a letter to your moving company laying out your legal complaints against the company, demanding whatever form of compensation is appropriate in your situation and threatening to file a complaint with the FMCSA (with all relevant penalties) if you are not compensated promptly.