THE CORE OF THE PROBLEM !

Today this blog turns away from individual complaints against specific household goods moving companies and toward the core of the problem:

THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

specifically the

THE OFFICE OF COMPLIANCE AND ENFORCEMENT

of the FMSCA

Towards the end of my personal 30 day nightmare with HIGHWAY HIJACKING
I received a 2 page letter dated 5/7/2009 from a member of the above referenced office, John Van Steenburg, his reference no. 100034124.

I wish he had e mailed me this letter so I could present it here in it's entirety. I do not have a scanner and the letter is lengthy and repititive to the max.

I will try to give you the gist of this letter with some direct quotes and the rest by my paraphrasing:

"Thank you for your website complaint regarding MEGA MOVING AND STORAGE CORP.With your authorization we have notified the household goods carrier (mover) of your dissatisfaction with the service provided during your move,along with an explanation of its responsibilities to consumers under Federal regulations. We will ask company officials to respond directly to you."

Well, la de da, here I am, your blogmeister, at the time, three weeks without any of my personal possessions ,a victim of a hijacking with said goods still in the hands of the criminals who robbed them from me, and the enforcement department of the DOT of the most powerful nation on earth is telling the criminals to "respond directly to me" Note that he doesn't even tell said criminals to send him a copy of their response! In effect he has just notified me that he is washing his hands of the problem. The rest of his long letter refers me to various other agencies and offers arbitration procedures I might want to try to resolve the dispute. Here are some of his suggestions:

"Movers engaging in interstate transportation of household goods are required to conduct their operations in accordance with Federal regulations but FMCSA does not have the authority to intercede on behalf of shippers to recover their goods"


I repeat for emphasis, as this is the real core of the domestic terrorism being practiced every day by household goods movers in the form of HIGHWAY HIJACKING"

"Movers engaging in interstate transportation of household goods are required to conduct their operations in accordance with Federal regulations but FMCSA does not have the authority to intercede on behalf of shippers to recover their goods"

I will continue tomorrow with Mr.Steenburg's other suggestions and his office's efforts to identify and investigate complainst against carriers as I want to be fair and not take his remarks out of context. I will try to get to a fed ex store today to scan his letter into my PC so I can present it in it's entirety.

Suffice to say for now, the fact that none of the agencies, victims of HIGHWAY HIJACKING would logically seek out to recover their stolen goods, have enforcement powers... DOT,ASMA,BBB etc. The police do of course but they are reluctant, to say the least, to get involved in what they ,in my opinion, seem to feel are contractual disputes.

Hijacking is not a contractual dispute; it is a crime. The ineffectiveness of the U.S. Dept of Transportation, DOT is the core of the problem.