How to avoid moving scams
The following tips and advice can help you reduce the stress of moving your household to another city or state. First and most importantly, choose a professional moving company that can prove it is legitimate. The movers should come into your home and see how much there will be to move, and they need to visually inspect your household items in order to make an estimate.
Moving companies that do not write up an estimate are not legitimate, since this is a necessary first step in the moving process. Second, the movers should not require any down payment or deposit of any kind. This is the mark of a scammer—asking or pressuring the customer into believing that a down payment is part of the move. It is not. How are you to know that they will deliver your boxes and furniture once they have your money?
There are thousands of people who have fallen victim to this scam—they give the moving company money before the move and either never see that company, or their things, again, or the scammers show up at the new house asking for more money than the original amount that was quoted to the customer. In effect, they hold the customer’s furniture hostage, until their demands are met, which is illegal, but happens all the time. You can prevent this by making sure you know the moving company’s reputation, their physical address, their web site and their telephone numbers.
They must also have the right certificated and licenses. Ask for their DOT and MC license numbers. It is also helpful to research the company to see if there are any published complaints about them by previous customers and if so, what type of problems they encountered. Check with the Better Business Bureau as well. From local movers to car moving companies you must always look into their business before choosing them.
One more red flag that can help you to avoid being scammed by a moving company is if they advertise much lower rates than every other company that you have checked into. They may try to lure customers with attractive pricing, but a legitimate mover will always offer an estimate based on actual market values for their services, since there is a lot of competition among movers. If you find a mover and do not have much information about them, you can always check them out by searching the Federal Motor Carriers Safety Administration, (FTCSA), at www.fmcsa.dot.gov.
It is smart to visit a site like moversquote.org to get free mover quotes and compare them as the movers are pre-screened and licensed.
The guest post is provided by MoversQuote.Org.
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