moving company estimates

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 amoount of competition and soon movers were no longer competing on services but on price. As competion 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 goes somethign like this. Free moving quotes online. A prospective client contacts a moving company and requests a cost estimate. In todays market this often happens online via moving directories or brokers. These moving brokers are little more than salesmen who are 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 times the scam movers use deceptive pricing or weight meassurements including prices based on cubic feet of space used in the moving truck. After packing and loading the common scam is to inform you that your 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 price rate. A.