Rogue Movers Progress, Regress
Congressman
Tom Petri
Tom Petri
March 19, 2006
Imagine this happening to you: you contract to move your household goods from one state to another, and your furniture, family heirlooms, keepsakes and all the rest are loaded onto a truck and carted away. You meet the truck at your new home, but suddenly the movers inform you that, "Sorry, but this move is going to cost you $4,000 - not the $2,000 originally quoted. If you want your stuff, you'd better pay."
Because movers engage in interstate commerce, local police usually consider cases like this to be a federal matter and advise victims to contact the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), hire a lawyer and take the movers to court. Rogue companies correctly assume that most victims will choose to pay the ransom rather than go through a drawn-out, expensive legal process while their property is who-knows-where.
The vast majority of moving companies operate in a fair, open and honest way, but the muddled regulatory situation has provided a large opening for thugs. A few years ago the Transportation Department estimated that it was receiving 4,000 complaints a year about rogue movers - cries for help which mostly went unanswered because, until recently, the department only had three people assigned to respond.
As Chairman of the House Highways, Transit and Pipelines Subcommittee, I held hearings in 1998 and 2001 on the problem during which I found enforcement by the DOT's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration ineffective. With limited resources, that agency understandably puts saving lives ahead of consumer protection.
In response, I decided to try crafting an approach to provide simple justice without mobilizing opposition from the moving industry. I found that even the honest movers fear regulations, frivolous lawsuits and legal actions more than they fear the damage done to their reputations by the crooks in their midst.
After much struggle, last July I managed to get legislation through Congress to clarify the states' role in regulating interstate movers, explicitly allowing them to participate in the enforcement of federal rules governing such moves.
It was an important victory for everyday Americans. But unfortunately, in Washington few battles are ever really over.
In November, during House-Senate negotiations over must-pass transportation appropriations, a senator from Missouri - home base of a major moving company - threatened to throw the nation's transportation funding off the rails unless provisions were included specifying that state authorities would only be able to initiate actions against certain carriers and that all others would be exempt, no matter what their actions might be. After some resistance, consternation and delay, the House's negotiators gave in to the senator's demands with some revisions.
As I told my colleagues while debating the final agreement on the floor of the House, "What we are doing is once again leaving the little guy unprotected, with nowhere to turn, with no recourse as their lives are in ruins. Couldn't we, for a change, stand up for the consumer against industry and correct this injustice? It is a sad day when we make it more difficult, and not less, for our citizens to get the recourse they deserve."
Fortunately, however, we won one key concession during the negotiations: the anti-consumer provisions will expire after one year - that is, unless Congress renews them. And we can be sure that the interests which forced them through this past November will be back again.
Because movers engage in interstate commerce, local police usually consider cases like this to be a federal matter and advise victims to contact the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), hire a lawyer and take the movers to court. Rogue companies correctly assume that most victims will choose to pay the ransom rather than go through a drawn-out, expensive legal process while their property is who-knows-where.
The vast majority of moving companies operate in a fair, open and honest way, but the muddled regulatory situation has provided a large opening for thugs. A few years ago the Transportation Department estimated that it was receiving 4,000 complaints a year about rogue movers - cries for help which mostly went unanswered because, until recently, the department only had three people assigned to respond.
As Chairman of the House Highways, Transit and Pipelines Subcommittee, I held hearings in 1998 and 2001 on the problem during which I found enforcement by the DOT's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration ineffective. With limited resources, that agency understandably puts saving lives ahead of consumer protection.
In response, I decided to try crafting an approach to provide simple justice without mobilizing opposition from the moving industry. I found that even the honest movers fear regulations, frivolous lawsuits and legal actions more than they fear the damage done to their reputations by the crooks in their midst.
After much struggle, last July I managed to get legislation through Congress to clarify the states' role in regulating interstate movers, explicitly allowing them to participate in the enforcement of federal rules governing such moves.
It was an important victory for everyday Americans. But unfortunately, in Washington few battles are ever really over.
In November, during House-Senate negotiations over must-pass transportation appropriations, a senator from Missouri - home base of a major moving company - threatened to throw the nation's transportation funding off the rails unless provisions were included specifying that state authorities would only be able to initiate actions against certain carriers and that all others would be exempt, no matter what their actions might be. After some resistance, consternation and delay, the House's negotiators gave in to the senator's demands with some revisions.
As I told my colleagues while debating the final agreement on the floor of the House, "What we are doing is once again leaving the little guy unprotected, with nowhere to turn, with no recourse as their lives are in ruins. Couldn't we, for a change, stand up for the consumer against industry and correct this injustice? It is a sad day when we make it more difficult, and not less, for our citizens to get the recourse they deserve."
Fortunately, however, we won one key concession during the negotiations: the anti-consumer provisions will expire after one year - that is, unless Congress renews them. And we can be sure that the interests which forced them through this past November will be back again.
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