Moving Company Deposit: What's Normal, What's a Red Flag

"This deal is only good for today so we need a deposit now to lock in the rate." The Office of Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Transportation quotes that sentence, word for word, on its household goods moving fraud page, in a list of patterns its investigators have seen in actual moving-fraud cases. It sits a few lines above another item on the same list: a company that "does not accept credit cards and requires payments to be made by either postal money orders, direct wire transfers, or cash."

Most people who search for moving deposits have a figure in front of them already. A sales agent has named it on the phone, or an email has a payment link in it, and the question is whether handing it over is ordinary business or the first step of a bad month. The federal rules answer part of that question precisely and leave part of it to the company's own paperwork. Knowing which part is which is what keeps the money recoverable.

This article is about interstate household moves, where the truck crosses a state line and FMCSA's rules apply. A move inside one state is governed by that state, and some states regulate deposits and cancellations in ways the federal rules do not.

Regulation text below was read in the eCFR on 22 September 2026, against title 49 and title 12 as current through 18 September 2026. FMCSA's red-flag page carries a "Last updated: Monday, November 4, 2024" line; its wording below matches the Internet Archive copy of 11 June 2026. Where a linked page has changed since, trust the linked page over this one.

Part 375 never uses the word

The consumer protection rules for interstate household goods carriers are 49 CFR Part 375. I pulled the full part through the eCFR versioner API and searched it, appendix included. The word deposit appears zero times. So does cancel. Refund appears once, in a sentence about lost or destroyed goods, not about money paid before a move.

That silence matters more than it looks. It means there is no federal cap on a carrier's deposit, no federal refund deadline for it, and no federal form it has to be written on. What governs a carrier's deposit is whatever the carrier has put in writing, and two sections point you at where that writing should be.

Section 375.215 says "All rates and charges for the transportation and related services must be in accordance with your appropriately published tariff provisions in effect, including the method of payment." And section 375.213(b)(2) requires the carrier, before the bill of lading is executed, to give you "a notice of the availability of the applicable sections of your tariff for the estimate of charges, including an explanation that individual shippers may examine these tariff sections or have copies sent to them upon request."

So with a carrier, the sentence to send is short: please send me the tariff provisions, or your written terms, that govern the deposit you've asked for and what happens to it if I cancel. A company that cannot point to anything has told you the deposit is governed by nothing but its mood.

Brokers are different, and the difference is written down.

Brokers have to publish a deposit policy, and the rule stops there

A household goods broker sells a move and then hands it to a carrier. If the company you are talking to is a broker (and a surprising number of the friendly websites are), its deposit falls under 49 CFR 371.117, which is headed "Must I provide individual shippers with my policies concerning cancellation, deposits, and refunds?" Paragraph (a):

You must disclose prominently on your Internet website and in your agreements with prospective shippers your cancellation policy, deposit policy, and policy for refunding deposited funds in the event the shipper cancels an order for service before the date an authorized household goods motor carrier has been scheduled to pick up the shipper's property.

Paragraph (b) adds recordkeeping. The broker must keep a record of each cancellation request and what happened to it for three years, and if it refunded a deposit, the record must include proof you cashed or deposited the check or money order, or proof the refund was delivered to you.

Read what the rule does and does not do. It forces the policy into daylight. It does not set a maximum, does not require a refund, and does not stop a broker from writing "non-refundable" in large friendly type. The protection is that you can read the policy before paying, so read it before paying. If the broker's website has no cancellation or deposit policy you can find, that is a gap in a mandatory disclosure, and a better reason to walk away than any figure.

Paragraph (a) also contains a date that most people skip: the refund policy covers cancellation "before the date an authorized household goods motor carrier has been scheduled to pick up" your goods. After a carrier is booked, you are in a different conversation.

Telling the two kinds of company apart takes a few minutes with the FMCSA registration search; the method, and what each registration type obliges the company to do, is set out in Moving Broker vs Carrier: Two Rulebooks, One Call.

What the government actually flags, and what it leaves unmeasured

FMCSA's consumer site keeps a list called Spot the Red Flags. One line on it reads: "The moving company demands cash or a large deposit before the move." The DOT OIG list repeats that sentence and adds the payment-method item quoted at the top of this page.

Neither page defines large. Several moving blogs attach a percentage to the word and credit it to a federal agency; the two federal pages I read carry no percentage at all. Any number you see presented as the official threshold did not come from them.

Size alone is a weak test anyway, because a legitimate carrier and a fraudulent one can both ask for a few hundred dollars. The OIG list is more useful read as a set of signals that tend to arrive together:

• Urgency tied to the payment. "Only good for today" is the OIG's own example.
• Payment channels with no dispute process. Wire transfers, postal money orders, cash. The OIG pairs refusal of credit cards with the deposit demand in a single bullet.
• No written estimate. Another OIG line describes a mover that gives an estimate "over the telephone or Internet — sight unseen" and provides neither a binding nor a non-binding written estimate.
• Generic identity. A phone answered "Movers" or "Moving Company" rather than a company name, a website with no local address and no FMCSA registration details.

One of those on its own is a question. Two of them together, with money requested before any estimate exists on paper, is the pattern the investigators describe.

A deposit, an estimate fee, or a rate lock that locks nothing

Companies use deposit loosely, and the federal rules draw a line the word blurs.

Section 375.401(b) separates two estimate types. For a binding estimate: "You may impose a charge for providing a written binding estimate." For a non-binding estimate: "You may not impose a charge for providing a non-binding estimate."

That gives you a direct test. If a company asks for money so that it will prepare your estimate, and the estimate it plans to give you is non-binding, the charge is one the rule says it may not impose. If the estimate is binding, a fee for preparing it is allowed, and it is a fee, not a deposit against the move. Ask which one you are paying and get the answer on the receipt.

The "lock in the rate" pitch falls apart on the same section. A non-binding estimate, in the words of 375.401(b)(2), "is not binding on you," the carrier, and "You will base the final charges upon the actual weight of the individual shipper's shipment and the tariff provisions in effect." There is no rate to lock. What a deposit on a non-binding job secures is a place on the calendar, at best. The difference between the two estimate types, and what each one means on delivery day, is worked through in Binding vs Non-Binding Estimate: Delivery Day Math.

The rules also expect a written estimate before the contract, not after. Section 375.401(b) requires the carrier to provide one "Before you execute a bill of lading," and 375.401(a) requires it to be based on a physical survey unless you waive the survey in a signed writing before loading. Section 375.103 defines a physical survey as one "conducted on-site or virtually," the virtual kind by live or pre-recorded video. A payment requested before any written estimate exists is money paid against a number nobody has committed to.

Where the deposit sits on the calendar of an interstate move

The rights around a deposit change depending on which document exists yet. Laid out in order:

The third row is the one worth knowing by heart. Section 375.505(h) reads: "The bill of lading must be provided to, signed, and dated by the individual shipper at least 3 days before the shipment is scheduled to be loaded. You must provide the individual shipper the opportunity to rescind the bill of lading without any penalty for a 3-day period after the individual shipper signs the bill of lading."

Two cautions on reading it. First, the rule does not say deposit. It says penalty. Whether a deposit kept after a timely rescission is a penalty is an argument you make, in writing, citing the section; it is not a phrase the rule spells out. It is a strong argument, because it is hard to say what else a forfeited payment would be. Second, the clock runs from your signature on the bill of lading, not from the day you paid. A deposit taken three weeks before the bill of lading exists sits outside that window for those three weeks, governed only by the company's written terms.

The same paragraph carves out day-of changes: if you add items or services on moving day and a new estimate results, the resulting changes to the bill of lading "do not require a new 3-day period." The window is for the contract you signed in advance, not a reset every time the paperwork changes. How the estimate, bill of lading and inventory relate to each other across these dates is the subject of Interstate Moving Documents: What Each One Fixes.

Delivery day: making sure the deposit counts

Appendix A to Part 375, the booklet every mover must provide, describes the normal payment point plainly: "It is standard procedure for you to pay the charges due at delivery prior to the mover unloading the shipment at destination, in accordance with the terms specified on the bill of lading." On a binding estimate that means 100 percent of the estimate. On a non-binding one, the booklet says you will be expected to pay 110 percent of the estimated charges, with the rest billed later.

Here is the gap. Nothing in Part 375 says how a deposit paid weeks earlier is credited against those figures. The regulations were written around payment at delivery, and the deposit happened outside them. That leaves room for a delivery-day demand that treats the deposit as a separate fee, or forgets it.

The fix is paper, arranged before load day:

1. Ask that the estimate state the deposit amount, the date paid, and that it is credited against total charges.
2. Check the bill of lading. Item (10) of the seventeen required entries in 375.505(b) is "The terms and conditions for payment of the total charges," and item (11), on collect-on-delivery moves, is "The maximum amount you will demand at the time of delivery to obtain possession of the shipment." If the deposit is credited, that maximum should reflect it. If it doesn't, ask why before signing.
3. Keep the receipt with the bill of lading, not in an email folder you'll search for on delivery day in a driveway.

Section 375.217(a) is the other piece: "You must specify the form of payment when you prepare the estimate. You and your agents must honor the form of payment at delivery, except when a shipper agrees to a change in writing." A delivery crew that suddenly wants cash for the balance, when the estimate and bill of lading say card, is asking you to agree to a change. You don't have to.

How you pay decides how you can get it back

Federal moving rules say little about deposits. Federal credit rules say a good deal about disputed charges, and they only reach you if the payment went on a credit card.

Under Regulation Z, 12 CFR 1026.13(a)(3), a billing error includes "an extension of credit for property or services not accepted by the consumer or the consumer's designee, or not delivered to the consumer or the consumer's designee as agreed." Under 1026.13(b), your written billing error notice must reach the card issuer "no later than 60 days after the creditor transmitted the first periodic statement that reflects the alleged billing error." The CFPB's consumer page, How do I dispute a charge on my credit card bill?, states the same 60 calendar days and adds that the issuer then has 30 days to acknowledge the dispute in writing.

Be realistic about what that covers. A deposit for a move that never happened, or a company that vanished, is the plain case of services not delivered as agreed. A deposit you forfeited by cancelling under a non-refundable policy you signed is a weaker case, because the service was available and the policy was disclosed. The card protects you from non-performance. It does not reverse a bargain you made.

The 60-day clock also runs from the statement, and statements arrive monthly. A deposit paid in April for a July move can age past the window before the move date arrives. If a company goes silent, dispute promptly rather than waiting to see whether the truck shows up.

The billing-error procedure above is written for credit accounts. Debit cards, bank wires, payment apps, cashier's checks and cash sit under different rules, and for a dispute with a merchant the protection is largely whatever your bank's own policy offers. Ask your bank before you choose the method, not after. This is also why the OIG treats a refusal of credit cards as a warning sign on its own: it removes the one route that works without the company's cooperation.

One more section belongs here because movers sometimes quote it. Section 375.221(e) says that if a shipper "causes a charge or credit card issuer to reverse a charge transaction," the carrier may treat it as "an involuntary extension of your credit," and the credit rules in 375.807 then apply. That section sits in the rules on paying freight charges. It gives a carrier that actually hauled your goods a way to bill you for them after a chargeback, with a service charge of one percent of the invoice and a $20 minimum for each 30-day extension under 375.807(c)(2). It is not a rule against disputing a deposit for a move that never happened.

Questions to settle in writing before paying anything

Send these by email so the answers exist as text with a date on them:

• Are you the carrier or a broker? Include your USDOT number and MC number.
• If you are a broker, where is your 371.117 deposit and refund policy? A link is fine.
• If you are the carrier, which tariff item or written term governs this deposit?
• Is this a deposit against the move, or a fee for preparing a binding estimate?
• What happens to it if I cancel before the bill of lading, and within 3 days after signing it?
• Will the deposit be credited on the estimate and the bill of lading?
• Which forms of payment will you accept for the deposit and at delivery?

A company doing things properly can answer all seven in one reply. The answer to the fourth question often clears up the rest.

If the money is already gone

Order matters, because some steps create the record the later ones depend on.

Cancel in writing, with the date. Email is fine; keep the sent copy. If you are inside the three days after signing the bill of lading, say so and cite 375.505(h). If the company is a broker, cite 371.117 and ask for the refund its published policy promises, and note that paragraph (b) obliges it to keep a record of your request and how it was handled.

Open the card dispute if you paid by credit card. Count the 60 days from the statement date, not the payment date. Attach the cancellation email and any written policy.

File with FMCSA. Complaints about interstate movers and brokers go to the National Consumer Complaint Database at nccdb.fmcsa.dot.gov. Include the company's USDOT number and whether it presented itself as a carrier or a broker. A complaint there is a record, not a collection service, but it is the record FMCSA uses.

If a broker took the money and no move was ever supplied, there is a surety bond or trust fund behind the broker's registration, and it exists for exactly that failure. How it works, and why it is shared among every claimant a broker has, is covered in the broker-versus-carrier article linked above rather than repeated here.

Your state attorney general's consumer protection office takes complaints about businesses operating in the state, including ones that take deposits for interstate moves. Many will also forward a complaint to the company and ask for a response, which sometimes does more than the federal file.

This page explains rules; it cannot read your contract. The site holds no operating authority and books no moves, and every rule above carries its section number so the text can be checked against your own estimate and policy. The standing disclosure is on the about page.

A deposit is not the problem. A deposit is a small payment attached to a question: what is this money attached to? A dated estimate, a published policy, a named form of payment, and a line on the bill of lading that credits it: if you can point to all four, the payment is ordinary. If you cannot point to any of them, you have been asked to pay for a promise that exists only on the phone.

Parts 371 and 375 of title 49 and section 1026.13 of title 12 were read through the eCFR on 22 September 2026, against text current through 18 September 2026. The DOT OIG household goods moving fraud page and the CFPB credit card dispute page were read the same day; FMCSA's Spot the Red Flags page was checked against its Internet Archive copy of 11 June 2026.