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Is shopping for a mover in a virtual marketplace safe? - Part III
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2007 GAO Congressional Report
Americans aren’t moving much anymore. According to the information in a recent Marketplace podcast report, Online competitors move in on shippers, “Dropping home prices and a dismal job market mean more people are staying put and moving companies have fewer customers.”
In fact the Census Bureau’s latest population survey “indicates that the number of people who moved between 2007 and 2008, 34 million, was the lowest since 1959-60, when the population of the U.S. was 41% smaller than it is now. The annual migration rate, which held at about 20% through the mid-1960s, has drifted downward since then to its current low of 11.9%.”
If that’s true, then, why would the number of reliability reports issued by the Better Business Bureau be increasing each year? And why would so many potential customers want to rummage through movers’ business histories, customer service profiles and complaint resolution results?
First, they’ve been warned. While doing their research they find hundreds of websites, magazine articles, news accounts, state attorney general offices, real estate brochures, consumer advisories and federal government resources that warn those considering a relocation to be wary of the moving company they select to provide their service.
Even the industry’s own voice, the American Moving and Storage Association (AMSA), cautions visitors to its website about the unscrupulous and unlicensed household goods carriers, independent rouge movers, unethical agents, anonymous internet move brokers and scam relocation companies that have flourished online after deregulation.
The second but much more compelling reason is that most are looking for value in their relocation provider. Basically they want to find a mover they can trust for the money that they are going to have to invest.
When the economy stagnated after 9/11, many American companies scaled back their hiring plans and transfer policies as a way to reduce their cost. Instead of being offered a full service relocation package, many new hires or transferees were instead presented with scaled down mobility packages, lump sum benefits, or relocation related reimbursement options. Employees who previously had their entire move planned for them found they were arranging all of the service providers themselves.
Unfortunately, most of these naive buyers don’t know what “deliverables” they should be looking for or standards they should be using to determine the value that they’re seeking when selecting a vendor. In this type of uninformed environment, moving simply becomes a commodity…and the online marketplace becomes an unsafe media outlet where inexperienced, gullible consumers become easy prey to the aggressive Web vultures who pitch low, low prices while still promising great professional service.
In 2001, the AMSA presented convincing arguments to the Subcommittee on Highways and Transit of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure calling for increased enforcement against unscrupulous household goods carriers and internet brokers in response to these growing threats. During the testimony, the Association urged Congress to act to authorize additional funds to have DOT fulfill its responsibility to uphold the existing law and force the closure of the legal loopholes that fostered abusive practices of internet scam companies and rogue movers.
Nearly two years later, the FMCSA acknowledged to the U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations that they had requested additional funds in the 2004 budget to hire a “limited number of requested resources to supplement the three (emphasis added) full-time commercial investigators devoted to their Household Goods Enforcement and Compliance program”…“to inoculate the public against these predators.”
The government administered their shot to a bent over, waiting public in June, 2003. Entitled “Transportation of Household Goods; Consumer Protection Regulations”, the interim final rule requires that “interstate household goods carriers provide written estimates, have an arbitration program for individual shippers, deliver goods on agreed-upon dates, publish truthful advertisements containing their name and DOT number, and weigh shipments of customers given non-binding cost estimates.”
The Final Rule, issued in July, 2005, specified how motor carriers transporting household goods by commercial motor vehicle in interstate commerce must assist their individual customers who ship household goods.
What the American public really got was consumer protection legislation that is more confusing than it is helpful. Although it addresses many of the industry issues raised by the AMSA, and provides shippers with a longer list of requirements they should expect from legitimate moving companies, it doesn’t offer consumers clear benchmarks or performance standards to access the quality of the thousands of service providers that fall under its scope.
In 2007, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) completed a follow up report to Congress to assess the impact of the recommendations that they’d made six years earlier. In “Some Improvements in Federal Oversight of Household Goods Moving Industry Since 2001, but More Action Needed to Better Protect Individual Consumers” , they acknowledged that “state officials also told us that many of the complaints that consumers have are related to small and illegitimate movers who often advertise on the Internet”.
So…if that’s the thorn in the public’s paw, how do the popular virtual marketplaces like Craigslist, eBay, and uShip go about removing it and actually protect consumers interested in moving their ‘stuff’? After all, according to the latest BBB complaint statistics, more than twice as many consumers in the U.S. complain about their internet shopping experiences than they do all three of the public transportation options listed in the 2008 report.
Source: BBB.org
What uniform metrics and objective, measurable standards are being used to gauge professional quality within their respective industry service group? More importantly, what is being done to ensure legal compliance to all federal and state statutes?
In Part IV, we’ll look at how virtual transportation marketplaces, online bulletin boards, and internet media companies fail to adhere to motor carrier compliance regulations when accepting advertisements from vendors engaged in the intra- and interstate transportation of household goods.
For more info: Still at your wit’s end? Join me at RELORoundTable – a gathering place where interested visitors can participate in a mutually supportive but commercially neutral learning environment that deals with the trials and tribulations of movin’.
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