Cancelling or Rescheduling a Move: What Happens to Your Deposit

Key Takeaways

• Under LIOO Moving’s Terms, a deposit is non-refundable once the move is 72 hours or less away. Earlier than that, eligibility depends on the timing of your request, so ask rather than assume.
• Cancelling on the day, after the crew is dispatched or after the movers arrive may cost you the deposit, and may leave you responsible for the minimum service charge.
• A confirmed date change does not extend or restart the deposit refund window. It may also change the price and may carry a reservation change fee, and the Terms publish no amount for that fee.
• Stopping a move in progress costs the greater of the applicable minimum or everything performed up to that moment, and the crew then leaves.
• If you turn the crew away because you expected a fixed price, the deposit will be forfeited and the minimum service charge will still apply.

Reschedule or cancel: they are not the same choice

Rescheduling and cancelling a booked move are separate actions under LIOO Moving’s Terms, and the difference is the single biggest factor in what a change costs you.

Rescheduling keeps the reservation alive and moves it to another date. Cancelling ends the reservation, and what happens to the deposit then depends on when you cancel.

So if the honest answer is “I am still moving, just not on the 14th,” say that when you call — because that is a reschedule, and it is a different conversation from ending the booking. Cancelling can feel like the tidier thing to do, but it ends a booking you still need.

If the move is still happening, move the date. Do not end the booking.

“Credited” is not the same as “refunded”

A credited deposit and a refunded deposit are different outcomes, and the two words are easy to mix up.

On a full-service local or labor-only move, your LIOO Moving deposit is 25% of the estimate, and under the Terms it is credited toward your final invoice. Credited means it comes off what you owe when the move happens — it was never an extra charge sitting on top of the job. That is the normal path, and it is what happens when a move goes ahead as booked.

Refunded is a different thing entirely: money coming back to you because no move is going to happen. The Terms treat that as timing-dependent, and they set one hard boundary — deposits are non-refundable once the scheduled move is 72 hours or less away. Outside that window, the Terms say deposit eligibility depends on the timing of the request rather than guaranteeing a refund, so it is a question to ask rather than an outcome to assume.

The timing ladder: what changes as the move gets closer

LIOO Moving’s Terms have no single cancellation rule. They describe a sequence, and what you may owe grows as the move gets closer.

Two things to read carefully there. The Terms say these later cancellations may result in forfeiture, but inside 72 hours the deposit is already non-refundable, so do not read “may” as a likely refund. And the exposure is not only the deposit: it can include responsibility for the minimum service charge, which on a local move is 2.5 hours as standard, or 3 hours on weekends, same-day bookings and moves 25 or more miles from downtown. Our guide to why a final bill differs from the estimate covers how those minimums work on a job that does go ahead.

The practical read: the ladder is why an early phone call is worth real money. Nothing about your situation improves by waiting to see whether the closing comes through.

Does a three-day cooling-off rule let you cancel a mover?

Usually not. The Federal Trade Commission’s Cooling-Off Rule gives you three days to cancel certain sales made at your home, workplace or dormitory, or at a seller’s temporary location. The FTC says the rule does not cover sales made entirely online, by mail or by telephone, so a move booked entirely online or by phone falls outside it. The FTC also notes that some state laws give more rights than its rule does.

Rescheduling: what carries over, and what does not

Under LIOO Moving’s Terms you may move your reservation to another future date, subject to availability. Three things are worth knowing before you do.

• Your deposit may not carry over automatically: deposit eligibility depends on timing, so ask how it applies to the new date.
• Your price may not. A new date or a new address can change what the job costs, because availability and crew size feed the quote. A Saturday carries a 3-hour minimum where a standard weekday carries 2.5, and a different address is a different job.
• A reservation change fee may apply. The Terms provide for one; they do not publish an amount, so ask what applies to your change rather than assuming either way.

If you stop a move that has already started

You can stop a move that has already started. LIOO Moving’s Terms say you may stop services at any time while a move is in progress, and they are just as clear about what follows.

What you owe is the greater of two numbers: the applicable minimum, or everything performed up to the moment you stopped it. The crew then ceases work and leaves — it is an ending, not a pause, and they will not wait while a situation gets resolved. And where a move cannot be completed because of your action, your inaction, or a misunderstanding of hourly billing, the minimum still applies and the deposit may be forfeited.

Worth understanding the “greater of” construction, because it works in both directions. Stop a job forty minutes in and you are at the minimum, not forty minutes. Stop one six hours in and you owe the six hours, not the minimum.

Two situations customers may not expect

Turning the crew away because you thought the price was fixed

Turning a crew away because you expected a fixed price has its own clause in LIOO Moving’s Terms, and the wording is definitive rather than conditional. Most moving services are billed hourly unless something else is agreed in writing, and the Terms put the responsibility for understanding that on the customer. Turn the crew away at the door on the basis that you expected a fixed price, and the deposit will be forfeited and the minimum service charge will still apply.

That is a costly way to discover how your quote was built. It is also entirely avoidable: the hourly basis, the crew size and the applicable minimum are all on the written quote before you pay anything.

Cancelling in order to hire the crew directly

LIOO Moving’s Terms bar cancelling a move in order to hire the crew directly. For 60 days after your move — or after any cancellation or stoppage — you agree not to hire, solicit or pay a LIOO crew member to do moving work outside the company, and specifically not to end a booking in order to pay the crew directly and sidestep what is owed.

If that happens, the Terms state the consequences plainly: you remain liable for the full charges that would have applied, you forfeit any damage protection, and you are responsible for reasonable attorney fees and collection costs. The damage-protection point is the one people tend to miss — an arrangement made directly with a crew member sits outside the company’s protection entirely.

What to do the moment your plans look shaky

Five steps help when a moving date starts to look uncertain:

1. Call as soon as you know — not when you are certain. The ladder is measured in hours before the move, and early is the only variable fully in your control.
2. Say which one you mean. “I need to move my date” and “I need to cancel” produce different outcomes. If the move is still happening, the first one is your sentence.
3. Ask what applies to your specific change — deposit treatment, whether the price changes, whether a reservation change fee applies to your situation.
4. Get the new arrangement in writing and check the confirmation, the same way you checked the original.
5. If a date is genuinely uncertain, say so rather than booking firmly and unwinding later. It is a better conversation to have before a deposit than after one.

If you think a mover has handled a deposit wrongly, put your concern to the company in writing first, which LIOO Moving’s Terms also ask of you. Our guide to where a moving complaint goes in Georgia covers the next step.

Everything above concerns the reservation changing. If your move is going ahead as planned and you want the sequence between your deposit and the crew’s arrival, that is a different article: what happens after you book.

Cancellation and rescheduling questions

Everything on this page describes LIOO Moving’s published Terms of Service. It is not a statement of Georgia law and not a description of how other moving companies handle cancellations — those vary, and the terms that govern your move are the ones in the contract you signed.