On the Move? Not So Fast: Prevent A Moving Disaster

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MONICA CONCEPCION did her research, checked references and even consulted the Better Business Bureau before hiring a moving company. So, why, a week after moving, was she still waiting for her stuff to arrive?

Concepcion, 26, just moved from Arlington, Va., to Houston, Texas, after finishing her master's. After extensive research, she finally settled on a moving company that had good reviews from former customers and was cleared through the BBB.

But while the company, America's Moving Services, had a high rating, the third-party carrier failed to live up to its reputation.

The movers picked up her belongings in Virginia but failed to arrive at the designated time in Texas. After several frantic phone calls, they finally told her they would arrive two weeks late. When she complained, they said it would only be one week.

The movers finally arrived, and Concepcion began to unpack, only to discover broken dishes and a missing bookcase. But after all that, she decided not to complain.

"It wasn't anything that was irreplaceable," she says. "Maybe this is a defeatist attitude."

Like many people who have dealt with malicious movers and tricky truck rentals, she found that all the preparation in the world won't always help you get your apartment's contents halfway across the country.

The American Moving and Storage Association estimates that there are about 16.4 million moves each year, and D.C. is listed as one of the top 10 most popular areas for both inbound and outbound moves. AMSA is a partner with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, a branch of the government that deals with vehicle safety and moving-related issues. John Hill, administrator of the FMCSA, says he receives about 3,000 to 4,000 complaints per year.

Hill says there are quite a few red flags for consumers to watch out for when hiring a moving company. The first is a moving company that gives an estimate over the phone without actually seeing how many boxes you have. Many rogue moving companies will change their prices drastically after seeing how many things need to be moved. Hill recommends getting more than one estimate.

"If it's too good to be true, they really need to think through this," he says.
Other warning signs are when a mover demands a large amount of cash as a down payment, doesn't have a local address and doesn't provide the required literature, including pamphlets on consumer's rights.

Heather Sawyer, 27, first moved from Birmingham, Ala., to Arlington, Va., in September 2005 for her husband's job. After renting a U-Haul, they decided to hire a moving company to help them unpack the truck. The price seemed reasonable, so they decided to pre-pay for three hours, thinking that they would pay extra if it went longer.

When the day arrived, the movers pulled up in front of the apartment. It turned out that the company was actually a guy with a "beat-up truck" hiring day laborers to move their belongings up four flights of stairs.

"That had not been our intention," Sawyer says.

The laborers moved the boxes upstairs for awhile, but then began to slow down, first by piling the boxes at the base of the stairs and then hardly moving at all. After watching one laborer drop a box of dishes, Sawyer decided to ask why they weren't working.

"They were, like, 'These are too heavy,'" she says. "They said they wanted to be paid more."

Sawyer and her husband tried to call the overseer, but, after a few failed attempts, they began to move everything themselves. The workers, meanwhile, sat down on the furniture so it couldn't be moved. When the overseer finally returned, Sawyer says he and the laborers proceeded to have a shouting match in the apartment complex before calling the police. When the police came, Sawyer says they tried to explain the concept of day laborers to her, and that they were less than enthusiastic because they weren't certified movers.

"It was really amusing," she says. "I'm from Alabama — I know what day laborers are."
The movers finally left, and the overseer called some of his friends to help finish the move.

"It was the only time we ever hired movers and probably the only time we ever will," Sawyer says.

Sawyer and her husband have moved six times in the last five years. Since the day-laborer incident, they've relied on family and friends only during their moves.

"If you move a lot, things get broken," Sawyer says. "It's a lot easier to stomach when it's your family scuffing your furniture."

Hill says the FMCSA is limited in its scope. Consumers with missing belongings will have to deal directly with the carrier. But for something more serious like possessions being held hostage, the FMCSA will investigate, which could result in heavy fines or even jail for the shady movers. Last year, the FMCSA investigated almost 500 complaints, and 30 percent ended with serious fines.

"We mean business on this," Hill says.

There's plenty to think about after your move, too. Everything went smoothly during Linda Garzone's (pictured above) move from Florida to Ashburn, Va.

"We were pretty lucky," she says.

But then they headed over to the Department of Motor Vehicles to change their car registration. When they tried to register her husband's car, they found that it would require extra paperwork, since the car was leased to them through a separate company. After six visits over a period of eight weeks, they both finally had new licenses and a new registration.

Rich Davila, D.C. district director of ZipRealty — an Internet-based real estate company — says a lot of people are so concerned about the move itself that they often forget to turn on the utilities in their new home. He says one of the biggest mistakes people can make is to have unrealistic expectations about how smoothly the move will go. When he moved from the D.C. area to Boston during last year's holiday season, he planned to have everything unpacked and presents wrapped before picking up his wife and children from the airport.

"I was running and rushing around to get everything done before this Norman Rockwell picture I had in my mind could take place," he says. But the boxes remained unpacked when he finally left for the airport.

"Life happens; those are the kind of things that are going to happen," he said.

Written by Express contributor Emily Barton
Photo by Jay Westcott for Express