Moving Violations
By: Source: AARP Bulletin Today Date Posted: 2003-09-03 13:16:00-04:00
Moments after they arrived at her new home, the movers Jeannine DiPanni hired to get her household furnishings from Florida to New York dropped the bombshell.
If DiPanni didn't pay $3,800 for a job the movers had estimated would cost just $1,400, they'd drive away with virtually all her belongings.
DiPanni's 55-year-old son, Paul Purpura, paid the bill under protest. "My mother was a physical wreck," he told the AARP Bulletin. "The movers held her belongings hostage, and she would've lost everything she ever had."
Purpura complained to state and federal authorities, but to no avail. "No one could help me," he says. "After six months, I gave up."
An estimated 43 million people move each year. But like Purpura and his mother, many are left without recourse when dishonest movers rip them off.
Complaints against interstate moving companies doubled from 1996 to 1999, according to a congressional report issued in 2001. Last year, the federal government logged 3,200 consumer complaints against movers.
Most scams involve giving low-ball bids, typically based on cubic feet, not on weight; using unnecessary packing materials to inflate charges; and refusing to unload furnishings without full cash payment of the final bill—no matter how much it exceeds the estimate.
In the worst cases, movers tell clients that if they don't pay up, they'll drive the truck away with the contents inside.
Federal regulations prohibit interstate movers from holding goods and demanding payment that's more than 110 percent of the written estimate, but enforcement is rare.
Move within a state, and you may be on your own. At least a dozen states have no applicable laws, and the laws in many others are rarely enforced.
"That's the state of moving in America at the moment," says Steve Hannan, head of the consumer affairs department in Howard County, Md. "There are very few consumer protection laws."
David Sparkman of the American Moving and Storage Association, an industry group, says most moving companies are honest and that scams are usually perpetrated by fly-by-night outfits found on the Internet.
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