Your Moving Company Won't Deliver Your Belongings. Here Is What to Do Right Now.

If your moving company has picked up your belongings and will not deliver them, you are in a situation that happens thousands of times per year. FMCSA logged over 900 hostage and non-delivery complaints in a single year. You are not alone, and there are specific steps that work.

Write down every date and time you called. Screenshot every text and email. Note who you spoke to and what they said. Save your bill of lading, estimate, and payment receipts.

Federal regulations at 49 CFR 375.401 require carriers to deliver within the dates specified on the bill of lading. If no delivery date was specified, the carrier must deliver within a 'reasonable dispatch' timeframe. A delay of more than 10 business days beyond the agreed window is not reasonable by any standard.

If you placed an AirTag or GPS tracker in your shipment, save the location history. Consumers in multiple documented cases have used AirTags to locate belongings in warehouses hundreds of miles from the promised destination.

Call the FMCSA hotline at 1-888-368-7238. Then file an online complaint at nccdb.fmcsa.dot.gov.

When you file, request that FMCSA open a proceeding under 49 U.S.C. 14915(a), which specifically addresses the failure to deliver household goods. This is the federal statute that makes non-delivery a violation.

FMCSA will send a notification letter to the carrier. This does not guarantee delivery, but it creates a federal record and puts the carrier on notice.

Call local police and report your belongings as stolen. A moving company that takes possession of your property, accepts payment, and refuses to deliver has committed theft by conversion in most jurisdictions.

File the report in the jurisdiction where your belongings were last known to be located, not just where you live. If you have AirTag data showing your goods are in a warehouse in another state, file in that jurisdiction too.

In at least one documented case (Howards Vanlines, Leavenworth KS), police involvement and an FBI referral followed multiple consumer reports about belongings held in a warehouse.

File a consumer protection complaint with the attorney general in the state where the moving company is registered AND the state where you live. Many states have reciprocal enforcement agreements.

Florida AG, California AG, and New York AG have all filed enforcement actions against moving companies in recent years. Your complaint adds to the pattern. State AGs act when complaint volume reaches a threshold.

If you paid any portion by credit card, file a chargeback immediately. The basis: services paid for were not delivered. You typically have 60 to 120 days from the statement date.

If you paid by Zelle, Cash App, or Venmo, recovery is harder. These platforms have limited dispute mechanisms. File a fraud report with the platform anyway. Also contact the receiving bank directly and report the transaction as potential fraud.

If you paid cash or money order, the money is likely gone. Focus on recovering your belongings rather than the payment.

Your belongings are almost certainly in a warehouse, not on a truck. If you have AirTag or GPS data, you have an address. If not:

1. Search the carrier's DOT number on safer.fmcsa.dot.gov. The registered address may be a warehouse or office where goods are stored. 2. Search the carrier's name on Google Maps. Look for commercial addresses, storage facilities, or warehouse listings. 3. Ask the broker (if you used one) which carrier was dispatched and where the carrier's warehouse is located. The broker is required to maintain transaction records under 49 CFR 371.3. 4. Check Trunk's entity link database. Many carriers share warehouse addresses with other companies. A carrier that is not answering your calls may share a facility with a company that will.

If you locate the warehouse, contact local police in that jurisdiction with your bill of lading showing you own the goods.

Do not pay additional money to get your belongings released. If the company is demanding more than your binding estimate (or more than 110% of a non-binding estimate), that demand is illegal under 49 U.S.C. 14915.

Do not sign any release or waiver in exchange for delivery. Companies use these to prevent you from filing complaints or lawsuits later.

Do not wait. Every day you wait reduces your leverage. Companies that hold goods count on consumers giving up.

Trunk tracks non-delivery and hostage load complaints across every interstate mover in the FMCSA database. The companies with the highest complaint rates for non-delivery and delivery delays include brokers who dispatch to carriers the consumer never chose. In multiple documented cases, consumer belongings were routed through intermediate warehouses in states the consumer never agreed to, stored for weeks, and delivered (if at all) by a third company the consumer had never heard of.

If your mover is not delivering, check your company on Trunk. If it has a pattern of non-delivery complaints, you are not dealing with a one-time problem. You are dealing with a business model.