PCS Damage Claims: How to Get Paid When the Movers Break or Lose Your Things

Somewhere between the packers taping the last box and the crew pulling away from your new place, something gets broken. It is ordinary — and the money for it is not a favour anyone is doing you. Your household goods move under full replacement value coverage at no extra cost, and the moving company that handled the shipment is on the hook for what it loses or breaks. What decides whether you actually collect is a set of clocks that start on delivery day and run whether or not anyone reminds you they are running.

This is the process in order: the three deadlines that decide what you are owed, the response times the moving company owes you in return, and the separate kinds of claim most people never realise are separate — loss and damage, inconvenience, damage to the house itself, and two more that belong to your car alone. Every figure and timeline below comes from Military OneSource's Understanding Moving Claims guide and the Department of Defense Personal Property Claims and Inconvenience Claims fact sheets dated March 2026, read on 27 August 2026, with the statutory limits read off 31 U.S.C. § 3721.

One naming note first, because it trips people up in the paperwork: the company moving your things is officially a transportation service provider, abbreviated TSP — which everywhere else in military finance means the Thrift Savings Plan. The two March 2026 fact sheets drop the abbreviation altogether in favour of "moving company" — it does not appear once in either — and so does this article.

The Three Deadlines That Decide What You Get

All three are counted from the delivery date, not the pickup date, not the date you noticed the damage, and not the date you unpacked the box.

Deadline	What you have to do	What missing it costs
180 calendar days	Give written notice of loss or damage	You drop out of full replacement value
9 or 12 months	File the itemized claim in DPS	You are paid depreciated value instead
2 years	Transfer the claim to your Military Claims Office	The claim is over

The middle row is the one that changed this year, and the split is by pickup date rather than delivery date. For shipments picked up on or before 14 May 2026, the filing period is nine months. For shipments picked up on or after 15 May 2026, it is twelve. The fact sheet and the body of the guide page agree on this; the summary table at the foot of that same guide page has not caught up and still says nine months everywhere, so do not be thrown if you see both figures on the same page.

Step 1: Give Notice Within 180 Days

The first step is not the claim. It is a written notice that names the items you intend to claim for — each item, its inventory number, and a one-line description of what happened to it. You do not owe values, receipts or photographs yet. You owe a list, in writing, within 180 calendar days of delivery. Miss that window and you are still allowed to claim, but not at full replacement value.

There are three ways to deliver the notice:

• Sign the Notification of Loss or Damage AT Delivery form the crew hands you on delivery day. Check that the moving company's contact details are legible on it before the crew leaves.
• Submit the Notification of Loss or Damage AFTER Delivery form in the Defense Personal Property System (DPS), behind the button marked "Start My Loss and Damage Report." Both fact sheets and the guide send claims to DPS and neither offers MilMove as an alternative, whichever system your move was booked in; if you cannot get in, the help desk on 833-MIL-MOVE covers both.
• Email, fax or post the notice directly to the moving company, and keep proof of receipt showing the date it arrived.

One exception still bites in 2026. The 180-day window applies to household goods picked up on or after 15 May 2020, and to non-temporary storage shipments picked up on or after 1 July 2021. Anything picked up before those dates is on the older 75-calendar-day clock — which is not a historical footnote if you are taking delivery of goods that went into long-term storage before mid-2021.

You can send more than one notice inside the 180 days. Damage found in week nine does not have to wait for a single perfect list, and it should not — send a second notice the day you find it. Photographs taken before the packers arrive are what turn "this was already scratched" into an argument you win, which is why the walk-through belongs on your pre-move checklist rather than on your list of things to do after delivery.

What Full Replacement Value Actually Buys You

Full replacement value, or FRV, is not "we pay what you paid." The moving company owes the lesser of replacing the item or repairing it. If it pays to replace, the replacement has to be the same or a similar item, and it may be new or used. If a qualified inspector says the item can be repaired for less than a replacement would cost, the company may pay for the repair instead. Either way it can require proof of the item's value, its quality, and what replacing it would cost — which is the entire reason to keep receipts and take photographs of the expensive things before they go on the truck.

The move types the guide lists as covered are household goods, unaccompanied baggage, non-temporary storage and direct procurement method shipments. A personally procured move is not among them, and could not be — when you pack and drive the truck yourself there is no moving company holding liability, so there is nobody for this process to file against. If you paid a commercial carrier to move you as part of a PPM, anything you claim is a commercial matter with that carrier on its own terms, not a claim in DPS.

Step 2: File the Itemized Claim

The itemized claim is filed in DPS, item by item. Non-temporary storage and direct procurement method shipments are the exception — those go straight to the contractor that handled the shipment, by email or post, rather than through DPS.

For each item, gather what you can before you log in: manufacturer, a description specific enough to identify it (model number if you have it), the inventory number from the packing list, purchase price, year of purchase, a description of the damage, a repair estimate if you have obtained one, and photographs or receipts. The claim will move faster the less the assessor has to come back and ask you for.

Step 3: The Clocks That Run Against the Moving Company

Once your claim is in, the deadlines start running the other direction. Every one of these is in calendar days except where it says otherwise, and they are worth knowing by heart: a company that has gone quiet is not simply slow, it is out of compliance, and that is what your transportation office and claims office act on.

• 15 days to confirm it has received your claim.
• 30 days to pay, deny or make an offer on a claim of $1,000 or less; 60 days if the claim is worth more than that.
• 7 days to respond to a counteroffer from you.
• 20 days from your claim submission to hire a repair firm where an item is being repaired, and 45 days for that firm to inspect the item.
• 30 days from an agreed settlement to actually pay or repair.
• Salvage items — the ones written off as beyond repair — must be collected within 20 days of inspection or 30 days of the repair firm declaring them beyond repair, whichever comes first.
• On shipments that involved more than one contractor — non-temporary storage and direct procurement method — the delivering company has 3 business days to tell you and your claims office if it is denying liability.

An offer is an opening position, not a verdict. You accept or reject item by item, and you may counter on any item not marked final. Most offers are cash, but you may also be offered a replacement item delivered instead, and where both are on the table the choice is yours. Where two offers exist and they differ, the one more advantageous to you is the one that is honoured. Do not accept an offer you are not satisfied with because the form makes accepting easy.

Two traps here. First, if the moving company has stopped communicating, do not repair, dispose of or even get an estimate on a claimed item before your claims office approves it — you can extinguish your own claim by tidying up. Second, if you file in DPS you must record your acceptances in DPS; a settlement agreed in email but never entered does not close the file.

The Two Faster Routes: Quick Claims and Essential Items

Not everything needs the full process. If the delivering company offers it, a quick claim settlement resolves minor loss or damage with paperwork signed on delivery day and payment inside five calendar days, entirely outside DPS. The trade is finality: items settled this way cannot be claimed again later, though anything else you discover after delivery is still fair game.

The ceiling on a quick claim is the one dollar figure where the current DoD sources disagree outright. The March 2026 Personal Property Claims fact sheet says quick claim amounts "will not exceed $2,000 total for shipments," with no qualifier. Military OneSource's guide page still carries the older two-tier version — $1,000 for shipments picked up before 15 May 2022, $1,500 for those picked up on or after. Recency does not break the tie the way you would expect. The fact sheet carries an explicit March 2026 date on its face — but the guide page's own metadata says it was published on 15 May 2026, the very day this year's other changes took effect, and last modified on 22 July 2026. The document still showing the lower figure is the more recently touched of the two. Rather than guess which governs your shipment, ask the delivering crew or your transportation office to state the ceiling before you sign anything.

The essential items route is separate and faster still. Essential means necessary for everyday living. The examples given are a refrigerator or other appliance needed to store and prepare food safely, necessary medical equipment, mattresses, and a washer and dryer — and the list is expressly not exhaustive. Entertainment items do not qualify, and neither do consumables that are meant to be used up and replaced. If an essential item arrives lost or broken, tell the moving company within seven days of delivery; it then has two business days to respond, and what it offers may be a payment, a permanent replacement, or a rental to use while yours is repaired.

Inconvenience Claims Are Separate Money

An inconvenience claim has nothing to do with anything being broken. It is a payment from the moving company for missing its dates, and it is not an entitlement — it does not come out of your PCS allowances and it does not reduce anything else you are owed. It also does not exist for direct procurement method shipments.

It is authorised when the company fails to collect your shipment on the agreed date, or fails to deliver by the required delivery date while you hold a residence and are available to receive the shipment. On a missed pickup there is a further rule worth knowing: if the company turns your shipment back within 14 days of the original date and the government cannot rebook it, you can be reimbursed for what you spent between the original pickup date and the new one. There are three more triggers built around storage in transit, and they are the ones people miss:

• Your shipment goes into storage at destination without the company first making and documenting two failed attempts to contact you, at least six hours apart.
• You ask for delivery out of storage and the company cannot deliver within seven government business days of your first request.
• You ask for a delivery date more than seven government business days out and the company still cannot make it within two government business days of the date you asked for.

All three of those are about storage at your destination. The guide says plainly that they do not apply to storage in transit at origin, so if your shipment is sitting in storage at the origin end rather than waiting for you at destination, ask your transportation office where you stand instead of assuming these triggers cover you.

Tell the company you intend to file and ask for the DP3 Shipment Inconvenience Claim Form if it has not already offered one; it must acknowledge that intent within five government business days of hearing from you or your transportation office, and reimburse within 30 days of your first contact. If it does not offer the form, your local transportation office is the lever.

How the Money Is Calculated

The baseline is the local meals and incidental expenses per diem rate — 100% of it, for the member. For shipments picked up on or after 15 May 2026, dependents travelling with you on funded orders are covered too, at 75% of the M&IE rate each, for the number of days at the affected location. For pickups before that date, the reimbursement covers the member alone. Military OneSource's guide adds the mechanics, for shipments picked up since those same 2020 and 2021 dates: for the first seven days you may take the per diem baseline instead of collecting receipts, or submit receipts instead if your actual costs ran higher; from the eighth day on, receipts are the only route. Unaccompanied baggage is always on actual documented expenses, never per diem.

Beyond per diem, some costs can be reimbursed case by case — renting furniture or appliances, renting special medical equipment, or housing costs above your BAH when a missed pickup forces you to extend a lease. Groceries and alcohol never qualify. Lodging and meals usually do not, though a short, unexpected delivery failure can be treated as an exception. Ask before you spend, and keep the itemised receipts. And note that tangible household items the company pays for can be reclaimed once your shipment arrives — a fridge it buys you is a loan, not a gift.

Note what an inconvenience claim is not: it is not temporary lodging expense. TLE is a government entitlement paid on your orders, covering lodging and meals in the gap between permanent quarters. An inconvenience claim is the mover's own money, paid because it missed a date it agreed to.

When It Is Not Payable

The company owes nothing for delays caused by events outside its control — natural disasters, acts of a public enemy, violent strikes — or by acts of the U.S. government such as a customs inspection. It also owes nothing if you or your representative were unavailable for a delivery scheduled before the required delivery date, if the shipment consisted entirely of alcohol, or where mold or infestation was discovered at pickup — though its liability can resume once that has been dealt with. One useful carve-out runs the other way: if the company misses the delivery date and you then become genuinely unavailable for the replacement date — mission, hospitalisation, other good cause — you can still claim for the gap between the missed delivery and the start of your unavailability, with a statement of non-availability.

Military claims offices are not part of the inconvenience claim process at all. That one is between you, the moving company, and your transportation office.

Damage to the House Is Its Own Claim Entirely

Gouged floors, dented drywall, a torn-up lawn and scraped door frames are real property damage, and they follow their own track. Do a walk-around with the crew before and after, note everything in writing on the Real Property Damage form the company provides, and photograph it the day it happens.

Then contact the moving company directly within seven calendar days of the last date its crew was at your residence. It may schedule an inspection within 15 days of being notified and share the repair estimate with you, or simply pay without inspecting.

The part worth knowing before you start: military claims offices do not handle residential damage and are prohibited from paying for it. If you cannot settle, your escalation is your local transportation office, and after that a legal office or an attorney — not the claims office that handles your household goods.

If It Is Your Car

A privately owned vehicle shipped through the government has its own two-track claims process, run by International Auto Logistics rather than your household goods mover.

• On-site settlement. Damage you spot at the Vehicle Processing Center while collecting the car can be settled on the spot for claims valued at $1,500 or less, paid electronically to your bank account.
• Filed claim. For damage found after you drive away, get an estimate from a repair facility of your choice and submit it to the claims office. You have 10 days from collecting the vehicle to file — the guide page phrases this as 10 business days — and the claim is reviewed, processed and settled within 40 days of filing.

There is a vehicle inconvenience claim too, and it is the one claim here where the government itself covers the first tranche rather than the contractor: if your car is not available on its required delivery date, the government will reimburse rental car and lodging costs up to $30 per day for the first seven calendar days, not to exceed $210. Past that point the contractor may be liable above the government's maximum. A decision is due in writing within 40 calendar days, and the moment the vehicle is available for collection the clock stops. Civilian employees can file as well, even though they have no rental car authority.

When to Hand It to a Military Claims Office

Transfer the claim to your service's military claims office if the moving company denies it, if you cannot agree on some or all of the items, or if it has not communicated for more than 30 days. You have two years from the delivery date to do it, and that limit is statutory rather than administrative: 31 U.S.C. § 3721(g) requires a personnel claim to be presented in writing within two years of the date it accrues.

What happens next is unusual and worth understanding. The claims office pays you the depreciated value up front, then keeps negotiating with the moving company for the difference on your behalf. If it recovers, you receive the difference up to full replacement value. The recovery is the claims office's job from that point rather than yours — though the guide is clear that you should stay in close contact with them while it runs.

The statute also sets the outer bounds of what a claims office can pay: an agency may settle and pay up to $40,000 on a claim for loss or damage to personal property incident to service, rising to as much as $100,000 where the claim arose from an emergency evacuation or extraordinary circumstances. And it sets three conditions on any payment — the claim must be substantiated, possession of the property must have been reasonable or useful in the circumstances, and no part of the loss may have been caused by a negligent or wrongful act of yours or of anyone acting for you.

Two practical notes: transferred claims leave DPS entirely and are handled by the claims office directly, so nothing further will appear in the portal. And do not dispose of any claimed item after transferring.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long do I have to file a claim for damaged household goods?

Two deadlines, both counted from the delivery date. Written notice of loss or damage is due within 180 calendar days, and missing it costs you full replacement value. The itemized claim itself is due within nine months for shipments picked up on or before 14 May 2026, or twelve months for shipments picked up on or after 15 May 2026. Filing after that is still possible up to two years out, but at depreciated value rather than full replacement value.

What does full replacement value actually cover?

The moving company owes the lesser of replacing or repairing each item, at no extra cost to you. A replacement must be the same or a similar item and may be new or used; a repair is authorised instead when a qualified inspector finds it cheaper than replacing. The company can require proof of the item's value, its quality and the cost of replacing it, which is why photographs and receipts taken before the move matter more than anything you can produce afterwards.

Can I claim for a missed pickup or delivery date?

Yes, through an inconvenience claim, which is separate from any loss or damage claim and paid by the moving company rather than the government. It is authorised when the company misses the agreed pickup date, misses the required delivery date while you hold a residence and are available, or mishandles storage in transit at destination. The baseline reimbursement is 100% of the local meals and incidental expenses per diem rate for the member, plus 75% for each dependent on funded orders where the shipment was picked up on or after 15 May 2026. Direct procurement method shipments are excluded.

Who pays if the movers damage my house?

The moving company, on a real property damage claim you make directly to it within seven calendar days of the last day its crew was at your residence. Document the damage in writing and in photographs the day it happens. Military claims offices do not handle residential damage and are prohibited from compensating for it, so if the company will not settle, your escalation is your local transportation office and then legal advice — not the claims office that handles your household goods.

What happens if the moving company simply stops responding?

After 30 days without communication you can transfer the claim to your service's military claims office, which you may do at any point up to two years from delivery. Until they approve it, do not repair, dispose of or obtain estimates on the items you have claimed for — acting on your own can extinguish the claim. The claims office pays depreciated value up front and then pursues the company for the balance up to full replacement value on your behalf.

Related Articles

• PCS Move Checklist Before Moving Day — the inventory and photographs that decide a claim months later
• PCS Storage Options and What the Government Pays — storage in transit, which drives three of the inconvenience claim triggers
• How to Ship a Car on a PCS Move — the vehicle processing side of the same move
• TLE and TLA Explained — the lodging entitlement an inconvenience claim is not
• 2026 PCS Reimbursements Guide — where claims sit among everything else a move pays