Clamping Down on Crooked Movers

One benefit of a good moving company: getting your stuff back. Reana Kovalcik says the $898 estimate she got online from Able Moving ballooned to $2,434 once the company brought her belongings from Chicago to New York, where she moved in 2010 for graduate school. Able held her things until she agreed to pay up, she says. She relented after months of haggling only to find $10,000 worth of property missing from or damaged in a New Jersey storage unit. (Able’s phone numbers have been disconnected.) “The whole thing was devastating,” says Kovalcik.

Furniture-nabbing by movers is on the rise and it’s hard to stop. The 7,000 moving companies in the U.S. are monitored by only 10 federal inspectors. Now the U.S. Department of Transportation, which employs the inspectors, and the Senate Commerce Committee say they’re going to step up monitoring and consumer protection. DOT Inspector General Calvin Scovel began trying to clamp down on moving-fraud schemes last year, and has 14 open investigations of companies operating under 108 names with roughly 3,800 supposed victims claiming $1.9 million in total damages. At a Sept. 20 Senate Commerce Committee hearing, the inspector general’s office reported identifying 36 victims with losses totaling roughly $126,000. In one case, an elderly couple quoted $1,340 for a move from Colorado to Nevada had their possessions held hostage, including the wife’s wheelchair, until they forked over $7,400. That mover has been indicted, according to the inspector general. Jay Rockefeller, the Democratic committee chairman from West Virginia, said at the hearing that “extortion” has become commonplace.