Binding vs Non-Binding Estimates: What Each One Obligates You To

For interstate household goods moves, the estimate you hand a customer is a regulated document, and the two forms it can take put the risk of a bad survey in different places.

Binding

A binding estimate fixes the charge for the goods and services listed on it. It changes only when the customer adds items or requests additional services. If the crew arrives and finds a basement nobody surveyed, that volume is not a change in scope — it is your cost, absorbed at your margin.

Non-binding

A non-binding estimate is an approximation of actual charges. The protection for the customer is the 110 percent rule: on an interstate move the carrier must deliver the shipment when the customer pays 110 percent of the non-binding estimate, and charges above that must be deferred at least 30 days after delivery. So an under-estimate does not simply get corrected on the invoice — it becomes a collections problem you carry for a month, plus a customer who feels misled.

The estimate must be in writing, and for interstate household goods it must be based on a physical survey of the goods unless the customer waives that in writing. See 49 CFR §§ 375.401 and 375.403, and confirm current requirements with your own compliance counsel.

What this means for how you survey

Neither form rewards a fast guess. Binding makes you eat the miss; non-binding makes you finance it and argue about it. The cheapest place to fix an estimate is before it is signed — which means the survey, not the invoice.

• Record every room, including the ones the customer does not offer to show.
• Note access on both ends: stairs, elevator type, long carry, parking and shuttle need.
• Get unpacked contents on the record as future box count, not as empty cabinets.
• Keep the signed waiver on file whenever a physical survey is replaced by a documented alternative.