RELO Roundtable…a gathering place

For folks who have stuff to move and the professionals who can help them

Archives for the ‘COMMENTARY’ Category

Happy Holidays!

By • Dec 14th, 2011 • Category: COMMENTARY

Thanks for dropping by! In the true spirit of this joyful season, me and mine wish you and yours a very safe and wonderfully relaxing holiday with your families, friends, and loved ones. Whatever they are, I sincerely hope you find comfort, and inspiration in both your individual faith and personal dreams throughout the New [...]



Twitter’s “Bad blog about you” emails

By • Oct 17th, 2011 • Category: COMMENTARY

Regardless of whether you're an occasional, part-time user of Twitter or a die-hard social 'tweet' aficionado, you may have noticed that your account was been phished/hacked a lot during the last couple of weeks. Last week I suddenly started receiving scores of direct message from Twitter followers that included an embedded link regarding a “bad [...]



Waiting Time = Hostage Load???

By • Sep 2nd, 2011 • Category: COMMENTARY, MovingScams, Scam

“Realtor of the Year” takes aim at the moving industryThe following is a copy of a recent entry that a well-intentioned realtor posted in the Report a Scam forum at the popular trash-your-mover site at MovingSCAM.com. Tim Walker, the owner, created the 'consumer oriented' venue to let others “know what is going on in the [...]



A schism at MovingSCAM?

By • Aug 21st, 2011 • Category: COMMENTARY, MovingScams, Scam

It appears it’s now the movers who are fighting back!   Perhaps it's the hectic summer schedule created by too many customers and not enough capacity that's getting on people's nerves. Then again, maybe it's just the overwhelming heat that's creating the rancor. Whatever the reason, it appears that there's an industry backlash developing at [...]



Visit ProtectYourMove.gov when moving

By • Jul 25th, 2011 • Category: COMMENTARY, Department of Transportation (DOT), FMCSA, Protect Your Move, Rogue Mover

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) just launched a newly designed website to help consumers protect themselves from fraudulent or unscrupulous interstate household goods moving companies. Different format; same content. The announcement comes two and a half months after the start of the relocation industry's traditional summer peak moving season. [...]



Movers lined up at the hanging tree

By • Jul 20th, 2011 • Category: Atlas Van Lines, COMMENTARY, Mayflower Transit LLC, MoveRescue, MovingScams, United Van Lines

It doesn't take long to hear the turmoil troubling movers this year. Half way through the relocation industry's traditional peak 'summer' moving season, customer service call centers, company switchboards, conventional news outlets and popular social media channels are being swamped with customer criticisms. The list of concerns includes complaints about missed service dates, unexpected price [...]



The handleset and the stockboy: A DPS comparison

By • Jun 27th, 2011 • Category: COMMENTARY, Defense Personal Property Procurement Program (DP3)

The thumb lever at the top of the handle on the front entry door to our home broke just before the start of summer.  It was part of an expensive but popular brand-name replacement we installed several years ago. A small 1/8 x 3/4 inch round retaining pin secured just behind the top plate of [...]



New rules for Maryland movers

By • Jun 6th, 2011 • Category: COMMENTARY

Residents might find it more expensive to relocate intrastate An old friend from college sent a couple of links to several industry related pieces she recently read in The Washington Post.  After all these years, she still knows how to stoke my fire to raise my ire. Moving without tears  is one of two articles [...]



The future of moving

By • May 12th, 2011 • Category: COMMENTARY

Peter Singer of the Brookings Institution, the huge nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, DC., just published a very interesting introspective entitled The Future of National Security, By the Numbers. Singer is a senior fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings and the director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative. His research focuses on three [...]



Reverse auctions and the moving industry

By • May 3rd, 2011 • Category: COMMENTARY, Defense Personal Property Procurement Program (DP3)

Found an unexpected but pleasant surprise when I turned on my computer today. A new subscriber wrote to thank me for including a list of reverse auction resources in a recent forum discussion about the best value scoring methodology.  It's the secret sauce being used by U.S. Military's Surface Deployment Distribution Command (SDDC) to drive [...]



Kiva - loans that change lives