2021 Study: Are They Real? The Truth about Moving Scams

What Exactly Are Moving Scams?

There are a wide variety of fly-by-night tactics that are more typical of those flyers you see on telephone poles, as well as Craigslist ads. Typical scams in the moving industry include (but aren’t limited to) situations where moving companies:

• Hold your possessions “hostage” and refuse to deliver them unless you pay them a ridiculous amount of money
• Change company names to avoid associations with previous scams
• Don’t mention additional fees, then charge them
• Charge premium insurance by default
• “Lose” valuable items and refuse to investigate or explain the loss
• Don’t show up after they receive a deposit
• Provide blanket estimates without asking to evaluate the size of your move

A Worrying Trend? Moving Scams up 91%, Year-Over-Year

Looking at the figures from Scam Tracker—a Better Business Bureau (BBB) analysis tool which allows people to report and track scams and fraudulent behavior they experience within the U.S. and Canada—it appears moving scams are largely on the rise. Some 230 moving scams were reported in 2020 alone, which is 91% more than the number of scams filed with the BBB in the previous year. And so far in 2021, the number of scam reports has already reached 148, despite us only being halfway through the year. That's higher than the total number filed by Americans in all of 2019 (121).

Partially, we can chalk up the rise in scam reports to the rising popularity of the BBB’s website and its initiatives, but it would be unreasonable to wholeheartedly deny the fact that scams are becoming more prolific. Considering millions of people move in the United States every year, 230 scams a year doesn't seem like such a high number. (And it isn’t, in scale.) However, citing the Federal Trade Commission, the Better Business Bureau suggests that only about 10% of scams are reported. With that percentage in mind, we can estimate that a more realistic number of moving scams last year is an estimated 2,300, while the number of scams in 2021 at the halfway point is currently estimated to be around 1,500.

Hidden Figures: Americans Lost up to $2 Million to Moving Scams Last Year

The total number of scams alone doesn’t tell us much about the impact they might have on people who fall victims to various kinds of moving fraud. Another way to gain an understanding of a moving scammer's impact is to look at the amount of money lost to moving scams over the years.

Based on Better Business Bureau’s Scam Tracker, the reported amount lost to moving scams in 2020 was $207,000 and about $114,000 so far in 2021.  Bearing in mind the high potential for scams going unreported, we can estimate that the amount lost to moving scams is in the region of $1.1 million during the first six months of 2021, and $2 million in 2020.

In that regard, the financial impact of moving scams seems to at least be in slight decline from the peak of $3.2 million lost in 2018 (when accounting for underreported scams).

As Likely as Being Struck by Lightning: How Common Moving Scams Really Are

The rise of moving scams and the potential millions of dollars lost to scammers in the moving industry is, by all means, a concerning trend. But if we look at the number of moving scams relative to the number of moves taking place in the United States each year, it's true that moving scams are rather rare.

Even if we take into account the fact that 90% of moving scams go unreported, the data suggests that only 1 in 15,000 moves that took place in the U.S. last year were afflicted by scams. For the sake of using a famous comparison, your chances of getting struck by lightning over the course of your lifetime are 1 in 15,300.

Where Are Moving Scams Most Common?

Still, rare as they might be, moving scams are actually more prevalent in certain states than others. Moving scammers are most common in the Western and Northern ends of the United States, with the states Alaska, Oregon, Washington, and Colorado all having the worst moves to scams ratio.  On the other side of the scale, moves in states like Utah and Missouri were the least prone to scams, in that the ratio of moves to scams in these states is greater than 30,000 to 1.

To get the details on the number of moves and moving scams in each state, check our map below, where we've assembled the data for the year 2020, the last full year for available data.

Moving scams are a nightmare for consumers and a source of great shame for the moving industry. The number of scams does appear to be on the rise, with a recent BBB report highlighting the suspiciously high levels of fraudulent activity since the start of the pandemic. We may never know the true extent of the problem, but at HireAHelper, we make sure fraudulent movers cannot exist on our vetted platform of over 2,000 Moving Service Providers across the United States. All HireAHelper moves come with a $1,000 Safety Guarantee, industry-leading customer service, and verification of every single mover review. Nobody deserves to have their life stolen from them, least of all when they are at their most vulnerable. Moving day is tough enough! If you feel like you may be a victim of moving scams, here's what you might be able to do to get your life back on track.

Sources and Methodology

The number of moving scams and the associated dollar amount lost was taken from Better Business Bureau’s Scam Tracker. The number of moves in each state for the year 2020 was taken from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Illustrations by Heather Vaughan