Nobody publishes a trustworthy satisfaction rate for movers
If you came looking for a number like “82% of people are happy with their movers,” we are not going to give you one, because no reliable source produces it.
Here is why that matters rather than being a technicality. The federal government does collect complaints about moving companies. But complaints only tell you how many people were unhappy enough to file — never how many people moved in the first place. Without that second number, any “satisfaction rate” built from complaint data is invented. Plenty of sites publish one anyway.
What you can get is better than a made-up average, because it is about the specific company you are considering: whether they are registered, whether they are insured, what has been alleged against them, and what their written estimate actually commits to. That is what the rest of this page covers.
What the federal complaint record does show
The Government Accountability Office reviewed 22,539 complaints made against moving companies between 2017 and 2021. One category stands out.
4,528 of those complaints — about one in five — alleged that a moving company held the customer’s belongings hostage.
That phrase means exactly what it sounds like. The movers load everything you own onto a truck, and then demand more money than agreed before they will unload it. Your possessions are already gone, which is precisely what makes the tactic work. It is the single most common serious complaint in the data, and it is the reason the advice further down focuses so heavily on getting the price fixed in writing beforehand.
Read that last row carefully, because it is the honest limitation of this data. In most cases the record does not say what happened next. The GAO also found the agency did not publish all its complaint data and lacked clear rules for reviewing complaints.
So use these numbers to understand what goes wrong in this industry, not to score it. A complaint is an accusation, not a proven fact.
Check the company in front of you
This is the part that actually protects you, and it takes about five minutes.
Every moving company that legally crosses state lines has a U.S. DOT number. Ask for it. Then look the company up in the federal mover search, where you can see whether they are registered and authorized, whether their insurance is current, and what complaints exist.
Two practical warnings when you do this. Match the legal name and DOT number, not the trading name — moving companies use very similar-sounding names, and it is easy to read the wrong company’s record and reassure yourself about the wrong business. And find out whether you are talking to a carrier (they own the truck and do the move) or a broker (they sell your job to somebody else). Brokers are legal, but the company that turns up is the one that matters, and you should know its name before moving day.
A company that hesitates when you ask for its DOT number has told you what you need to know.
No single check is enough. An empty complaint record is not proof of excellence — it may just be a new company. Use several signals together.
Turn it into paperwork you can rely on
The FTC’s advice is straightforward: get several written estimates, make sure each company either visits or gets a full description of everything you own, and check that every estimate covers the same list. That last point is the one people skip, and it is why quotes seem to vary so wildly.
Two specific things worth insisting on, given what the complaint data shows. Be very cautious about a company that wants a large deposit up front or asks to be paid by wire transfer or a personal payment app — those methods are almost impossible to reverse. And make sure your estimate, inventory, order for service, bill of lading, protection choice, payment terms, and delivery window all describe the same move before anything is loaded.
For more on where extra charges come from, see long-distance moving hidden fees.
Where these numbers come from
The complaint figures come from the GAO’s September 2023 review of federal complaint data covering 2017 to 2021. They are historical. Registration and complaint records for any individual company change constantly, so check those live rather than trusting anything published, including this page.
We deliberately publish no industry satisfaction percentage, because none of these sources supports one. We would only add one if a survey appeared that stated its population, sample, dates, question wording, weighting, and margin of error. Counting complaints does not meet that bar, however confidently other sites present it.
For more context on the industry, see our moving industry statistics, mover employment statistics, annual US migration report, moving trends, and how many people move each year.