South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Florida popular with scam movers
More than two months after they were loaded into a truck dispatched by a South Florida-based moving company, Rochelle Cochran’s belongings still haven’t shown up at her new home, said the
73-year-old’s son, Sean. Everything Rochelle Cochran cared about was put on that truck, including furniture, heirlooms, jewelry, family photographs and keepsakes from her career with Motown Records.
“I paid the deposit on June
7, and they picked the stuff up on June 27,” Sean Cochran said in early August. “They said delivery would take no more than 15 business days.”
Welcome to the complicated, sophisticated and riskladen marketplace of phony and legitimate interstate moving companies — a scary world with little regulation and enforcement, and slick, convincing websites. In this world, companies licensed as brokers that own no actual trucks and employ no laborers call themselves moving companies and don’t necessarily disclose to customers that they subcontract jobs out to low-bid independent movers across the country — leaving customers vulnerable to a wide range of abuses, experts say.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which regulates interstate moving companies,
faces an “increasing number of rogue household goods movers and brokers that intentionally provide low estimates to get a moving contract but then refuse to deliver the goods unless they receive significantly more money than the initial quote,” according to its 2018 budget request document.
These are known as “hostage loads,” the document said.
Sean Cochran said the mover that picked up his mother’s belongings hasn’t made any ransom demand but on moving day told her that she had more goods to load than identified in the estimate. The mover wanted an additional $800 to move the extra goods but Cochran and his mother declined, he said, and either threw away or gave away what was left behind.
Florida has long been among the top states for departures and arrivals. In 2016, about 605,000 people moved to Florida from other states — the most of any state; while about 433,500 moved from Florida to other states — fourth-highest in the United States, according to estimates from the Census Bureau.
So it makes sense that Florida is home to a disproportionate share of moving companies that generate large numbers of complaints, said Scott Michael, president and CEO of the American Moving and Storage Association.
Questionable companies probably see the state “as a target market — a nice area to operate,” he said.
On July 31, the U.S. Department of Justice announced federal racketeering charges against 12 individuals who it said used a Hollywood office to run a national moving scheme that defrauded more than 900 customers. Using a warehouse in West Chester, Ohio, the 12 suspects operated at least 14 moving companies with names such as Flagship Van Lines, Public Moving Services and Unified Van Lines, a department news release said.
Prosecutors described elements of a classic scam: The fake companies created fake online reviews to trick customers into thinking they were legitimate, then provided low estimates to win the customers’ business. Arriving at customers’ homes, they would load goods onto their trucks and then increase the price of the move. If the customer refused to pay the inflated prices, the defendants would in some cases steal their possessions, never delivering them, the release said.
As complaints mounted against them, those companies would be shut down, and a new one would be created in its place.
In hindsight, Sean Cochran said he realizes where he went wrong.
He sent a $507 down payment based largely on a professional, attractive website that buried the key fact that the company was in fact not a moving company with trucks and laborers. Cochran said the company he found offered Florida, with its heavy volume of people moving in and out of the state, has high appeal to fraudulent moving companies.
Check out these resources before hiring a mover
These websites cover topics such as requirements for written estimates, insurance, and where to complain. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s “Protect Your Move” website: fmcsa.dot.gov/protect-your-move
American Moving and Storage Association’s ProMover program: moving.org/home/find-a-promover UniGroup’s MoveRescue website: moverescue.com
Better Business Bureau search site: bbb.org/en/us
Resources for moves within the metro region or inside Florida:
the lowest estimate of the handful of companies he checked — $1,407 to move about 2,000 pounds from Bolingbrook, Ill., to Katy, Texas.
Many brokers “do a great job of developing great websites that are very attractive and compelling and rank high in search engine results,” Michael said.
Brokers posing online as legitimate carriers have increased thanks to consumers’ growing comfort with online shopping, he said.
The internet “has made it easier than ever for consumers to become victims,” said Eily Cummings, spokeswoman for UniGroup, parent of national moving companies United Van Lines and Mayflower Transit.
UniGroup operates MoveRescue.com, a resource that helps consumers find reputable movers, avoid scams, and that advocates for them when they are scammed.
“The internet eliminates cost of entry into the moving market; has increased the presence and use of moving brokers [‘middlemen’], and allows bad actors to lure customers well beyond their local areas,” Cummings said.
“In the old days,” Michael said, “someone would have found a local company using the Yellow Pages. Now it doesn’t bother someone from the Midwest to hire a company from South Florida.”
Only after his mother’s belongings went missing did Sean Cochran start digging into the company’s online reputation.
On the Better Business Bureau site, the company has a D minus rating with 47 complaints since October 2017. Of 17 reviews posted on the site, 11 consumers gave
Broward County moving resource page: broward.org/Consumer/ ConsumerProtection/Movers/Pages/ default.aspx
Palm Beach County moving resource page: discover.pbcgov.org/publicsafety/ consumeraffairs/Pages/Moving.aspx Miami-Dade County moving resource
the company one out of five stars — the lowest possible rating — and posted lengthy horror stories with details that included being upcharged after belongings were loaded onto a truck, damaged floors and furniture, crushed boxes, missing items, and unapologetic responses to complaints.
The other six reviews were glowing — full of praise with five-star ratings.
The company’s Yelp page was similar — 25 one-star reviews out of 50, with 17 others giving the company four or five stars. Before a consumer can see any of the company’s Yelp reviews, however, they have to click through a warning that says: “We caught someone redhanded trying to pay someone to write, change, prevent, or remove a review for this business.”
A link to “the evidence” brings up a refund settlement document that required the customer to agree “to not post any type of negative feedback on any type of social platform.”
A reviewer who posted a one-star review on April 17 returned on June 13 and posted a second review where she gave it four stars. She wrote: “My moving experience was still awful, but after a few months of silence, [the company] was willing to come to a resolution. In exchange, I was asked to update my review to four stars.”
Rather than rely on commercial websites that can be seeded with phony reviews, potential customers might be best served by searching the U.S. Department of Transportation’s registration database for the number of complaints filed against companies, Michael said. Consumers can type a company’s name into a search box to
page: miamidade.gov/business/ laws-moving-companies.asp State of Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services: freshfromflorida.com/ Consumer-Resources/ConsumerRights-and-Responsibilities /Moving-Within-Florida
find out the number of complaints filed against it over the past four years across numerous categories. The database will also reveal whether the company is a broker or carrier, and whether the company is currently insured.
The company Cochran hired to move his mom’s belongings is the subject of 41 complaints, including 22 in the category of “shipment documents,” 26 regarding “estimates/final charges,” 24 for “pickup and delivery,” 17 for “loss and damage,” and 21 for “claim settlement.” The sum of complaints across the various categories exceed the number of total complaints because consumers can mark more than one category.
In addition, the database will also reveal the address on the company’s license that consumers can then search via Google. “A lot of funny websites don’t show a physical address,” Michael said. “But many do, and you can type the address into Google Maps. If you find it’s a home or a Post Office box, that might be a red flag.”
Another red flag is if you look for the company via Google Maps’ street view and see a business without trucks, Michael said.
“It’s one thing to have a picture of a truck on a website,” he said. “But if you want to be moved in a truck, you have to hope they have trucks.”
Consumers need to be careful about choosing a mover because there’s little available help if things go awry, Michael said.
While in-state moving companies are subject to enforcement by local and state authorities, complaints about interstate movers are handled by a tiny program within
the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration called Household Goods and Commercial Enforcement. In its
2017 budget request, the federal Department of Transportation reported that just
13 workers regulate about
5,000 household goods carriers and more than
20,000 brokers and freight forwarders.
Of 3,000 consumer complaints received each year, about 20 percent, or 600 complaints, are reports of shipments being held hostage, according to the request.
“The Program is severely challenged in responding to and/or investigating all complaints” about hostage goods, the request said.
“A major problem,” it said, is the inability to prevent “reincarnation of motor carriers” — meaning rogue companies that change their names to escape bad online reviews.
Another way consumers can protect themselves is to search for a certified “ProMover” on the American Moving and Storage Association’s website, Moving.org. Michael said the association screens moving companies to ensure they meet its ethical and professional standards. Applicants are turned down each year, and some are dropped each year during the association’s annual rescreening process.
Only a few brokers are recommended as “ProMovers,” he said.
“The broker situation is a challenge,” he said. “It’s a category that the government allows to exist and licenses. A few follow the rules. Unfortunately, a lot of brokers are not as compliant. We can’t say, ‘Don’t use brokers,’ but in many cases, it makes more sense to use movers.”