Gov. DeSantis signs bipartisan bill adding safeguards against moving company scams

Gov. Ron DeSantis has quietly signed a bipartisan bill designed to keep moving companies and the businesses that link them with customers from price-gouging.

The measure (SB 304), which lawmakers unanimously approved this year, increases documentation requirements and prohibits moving businesses from withholding people’s possessions for excessive payments.

Sponsor Ed Hooper, a Republican Senator from Palm Harbor, said the changes are necessary to counteract a rise in predatory moving industry practices.

“This bill is about transparency and accountability,” he said at its first committee stop.

DeSantis signed the measure Tuesday.

Effective July 1, SB 304 will ban moving brokers — a third-party company that arranges for, but doesn’t provide, moving services — from giving estimates or providing contracts for services that include estimated moving costs. A broker must also make clear that it only arranges for a move and that its fees aren’t part of the actual moving costs.

The measure also expands moving broker reporting responsibilities to both consumers and the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, which will now be able to penalize companies that act unscrupulously.

Further, SB 304 requires movers to sign contracts that include the estimated date and cost of a service to customers before providing any moving or accessorial work. The contracts must include contact and locational information for the moving company’s workers and the goods shipped or stored. They must also include an itemized breakdown of all costs and services and a clearly written, conspicuously placed disclosure of all accepted forms of payment.

Violators will face fines of up to $50,000. Accordingly, the measure requires that moving companies maintain a $50,000 performance bond or certificate of deposit in a Florida bank. A mover that refuses to relinquish a customer’s goods after police confirm the customer paid the agreed-to sum can be charged with a third-degree felony, punishable by up to five years in prison and $5,000 in fines.

In 2022, the Better Business Bureau received more than 15,000 complaints against moving companies and moving brokers that act as intermediaries between movers and customers. The organization recorded some 30,000 complaints between 2017 and 2019.

Most of the bad actors are in Florida, a Newsweek analysis of complaints filed with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration found. Of 7,647 cases, more than half involved moving companies and brokers in the Sunshine State.

SB 304 applies only to moving operations that begin and end in Florida. Moves between states are subject to federal oversight.

Democratic Reps. Allison Tant of Tallahassee and Kimberly Daniels sponsored an identical companion bill (HB 367) in the House for which they substituted Hooper’s measure.

Hooper carried similar legislation in 2022 and 2023. The 2022 bill, which had no lower-chamber analog, stalled out after clearing its first committee. Last year, two bills (SB 1106, SB 1108) advanced with unanimous support through two of three committee stops before dying due to a lack of support for their companions (HB 1523, HB 1525), which Tallahassee Democratic Rep. Gallop Franklin carried.