DOT Already Solved This Problem for Airlines. It Won't Do It for Movers.

The Department of Transportation has already solved the problem of consumer protection being buried inside a safety agency. It solved it for airlines. It has not solved it for movers.

DOT's Office of Aviation Enforcement and Proceedings (OAEP) sits within the Office of the Secretary of Transportation (OST), not within the FAA. OAEP's Aviation Consumer Protection Division (ACPD) handles consumer complaints about air travel, responds to congressional inquiries, and conducts investigations of airlines for violations of DOT rules.

OAEP was modeled after the FTC's Telemarketing and Consumer Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act. Its authority is contained in 49 U.S.C. 41712, which prohibits unfair and deceptive practices in air transportation. According to OAEP officials, this enforcement authority involving competition exceeds that of the Department of Justice in some respects.

OAEP publishes airline complaint data transparently. Consumers can see what other travelers reported, how the airline responded, and the outcome. The data is publicly accessible without FOIA requests.

This is the key finding from GAO-10-38 (page 34):

'OST officials also told us that when DOT was considering where to put responsibility for its consumer protection efforts involving the aviation industry, it considered placing oversight with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). However, because FAA handles safety regulation and operates in support of a safety mission, DOT officials realized that there was the potential for consumer protection efforts to be lost in FAA's safety mission, so they created OAEP within OST.'

DOT recognized the problem. A safety agency will prioritize safety. Consumer protection will be deprioritized, underfunded, and understaffed. The agency's culture, budget, performance measures, and leadership attention will all orient toward the safety mission. Consumer protection will languish.

So DOT separated them. Aviation safety stayed at the FAA. Aviation consumer protection moved to a separate office in OST with its own staff, budget, and mission.

Household goods consumer protection faces the identical problem at FMCSA. And DOT has not separated them.

GAO found that the parallels between FMCSA's HHG program and OAEP's aviation program are extensive:

Both are responsible for consumer protection in a transportation industry. Both deal with similar legal issues, such as preemption. Both use consumer complaint information as the foundation for identifying violators. Both have similar budgets for consumer protection activities.

The critical difference: OAEP's sole mission is consumer protection. FMCSA's primary mission is highway safety. FMCSA told GAO that 92% of its budget goes to safety. Consumer protection is not one of its five strategic goals. It is a sub-objective under 'Productivity,' listed alongside reducing traffic congestion.

A senior FMCSA official told GAO that even if the agency received additional resources, those resources would be used for safety, not consumer protection. This is not a resource problem. It is a mission alignment problem. The agency does not want the responsibility it has been given.

When you file a complaint about an airline with DOT, OAEP's Aviation Consumer Protection Division processes it. The complaint is published with context: what happened, the airline's response, the category (delay, baggage, overbooking, etc.). The data is publicly searchable. Journalists, researchers, and consumers can access it without FOIA requests.

When you file a complaint about a mover with FMCSA, the NCCDB logs a complaint count. The actual text of your complaint is not publicly accessible. The company receives a notification letter. The complaint is marked 'Closed - Other.' The narrative is locked behind a FOIA request with a 6,256-request backlog.

The airline system publishes what happened. The moving system publishes that something happened. The difference is transparency, and it exists because one program is run by an office whose mission is consumer protection, and the other is run by an agency whose mission is highway safety.

GAO identified the fix in 2010: create a separate office within OST, modeled on OAEP, focused on interstate household goods consumer protection. The advantages GAO identified:

Better focus on consumer protection by eliminating the competition with safety priorities. More independence to ensure consumer protection gets appropriate priority. Access to the General Counsel's office for enforcement and legal support. A proven model (OAEP) that already works for aviation within the same department.

The disadvantages GAO identified: OST lacks field staff, the transfer would require legislative authority, and some efficiencies from FMCSA's registration system would be lost.

These disadvantages are real but solvable. The advantage, an office that actually prioritizes consumer protection because that is its sole mission, addresses the fundamental problem GAO documented across three reports and 25 years: FMCSA does not want to do this job, and it has told GAO so on the record.