The cost of a long distance move with a premium moving company can be enormous; and many people try to cut costs by using a smaller moving company they found on the Internet. Usually, they end up booking their move with a moving broker, who subsequently subcontracts the move to any one of a number smaller pickup moving companies. These companies are inexperienced, unreliable, and what’s worse, in many cases, not bound at all to the original “binding agreement,” the consumer made with the moving broker. So once the company loads the household belongings on the truck, they frequently raise the moving price two or more times the original estimate. If the consumer won’t pay, the moving company will threaten to hold his belongings hostage until he does.

Read a few excerpts from a story taken from a prominent anti-moving scam webs site, which illustrate how these scams take place.

I booked this move through a broker: Moving On Time (movingontime.com). I paid a $902 deposit on a quote of $3636.00 (phone in). Mistakes, I know….Once our things were on the (full) truck, the foreman told me that if I didn’t give him $400, what he called a ‘good tip’, he would price the move at $9600; if I paid him he would price it at $7500. When I told him I didn’t have half of $9600 up front, he told me my household goods could be auctioned off to fulfill the contract. I paid the extortion in $160 cash and $240 check (which I stopped payment on once I had a binding price). It is my position that once they tried to extort money from us and threatened our property, all contracts signed after that point were signed under duress.” The movers wanted $3750 up front plus $225 for using my credit card. I was to have $3750 in cash only upon delivery. I asked the foreman about my $902 deposit and he said, “the company gets that.”

Not the mere size of the extortion, but the arrogance with which it is carried out, is practically without precedent in the modern business world. The price being suddenly jacked up from $3636.00 to $8627.00, and the threat to hold the belongings hostage or sell them, almost staggers the imagination. Until one looks behind the scenes and discovers that the movers have the force of a legal technicality behind them, which emboldens their actions.

Movers who have received a subcontracted move are not bound by the “binding estimate,” of the moving broker unless they signed an agreement ahead of time to abide by the estimate. But the truth is that many of these moving companies never sign such estimates, and therefore, can make up any price they want on the day of the move. They wait till they have the goods in their clutches, and then name the price.

The very logic of the situation will convince any reasonable person, that moving subcontractors rarely make a written agreement with the broker to abide by the estimate. Moving brokers frequently give “low ball estimates,” and after taking their cut, have trouble finding a mover who will make the move for the small amount of cash left over. In order to get the goods to the destination, they are frequently forced to subcontract the move to small peripheral moving companies who never entered into a written agreement with the broker. At the time of the estimate, they were unaware of the move, and they couldn’t afford to make the move for that price.

However, the broker might make the estimate and have one mover in mind, and then that mover automatically cancels, and the customer must now move with a second mover who never agreed to the estimate.

This report was brought to you by Packing Service Inc. Packing Service Inc is a national Packing service company dedicated to protecting the consumer from Moving scams.

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