I-TEAM: Families hit roadblocks with new military moving contract

AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) - Every year more than 300,000 military families get orders that uproot their lives, often with little time or notice.

Some move all the way across the country.

Others move all the way across the world.

It can be extremely stressful, but the I-TEAM uncovered that the new contract with HomeSafe Alliance is making it even more stressful for some.

Now, some families are sounding the alarm before they say it’s too late.

“We don’t understand what happened.”

When you sign up to serve, you know there’s always a chance you could face combat, but our men and women in uniform are fighting another battle.

Only, this battle is on the home front, and their families are on the front lines.

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The I-TEAM spoke via Zoom to four families in the middle of military moves.

They have never met. They all live in different parts of the country and belong to different branches of the military, but they all belong to the same club they never expected to .

“We’re like, OK new system. We’re going to roll with the punches,” said Laura Brigman from her home in Wisconsin.

Periodically, you can see the heads of her two young children pop up in the background as she talks to the I-TEAM about this new system.

HomeSafe Alliance awarded contract to move military families

The new system is called the Global Household Goods Contract, or GHC. Basically, the military is getting out of the business of moving and handing over the keys to a single private company.

HomeSafe Alliance hasn’t even fully rolled out the program yet, but families say it’s off to a bumpy start.

“We don’t understand what happened,” said Brigman.

She says she based everything on moving dates HomeSafe Alliance provided to her family via email. When moving day came, no one showed up.

“And they’re like, ‘Oh. We don’t have movers plan for you. We haven’t had anybody locked in for you.’ ‘Uhhhhh…I’m sorry? Your emails had told us we had movers.’ They’re like, “Oh, those are all auto-generated, and we have no way to stop them,” said Brigman.

The military was able to step in and move Brigman’s family under the legacy system.

Within 24 hours, movers were at their home beginning to pack.

Movers also didn’t show up for Katelin Golgart.

“My husband was like, ‘We have flights. Like, do you not understand? My wife has flights for family that are dying, and we can’t move everything around because you guys can’t show up on the day you promised,’” said Golgart.

Golgart spoke to us from her aunt’s home in South Carolina mid-move. Luckily, she says she has family in the area.

The military was able to step in and help her family, too.

Olivia took matters into her own hands.

“I have to report to my command by, you know, February 12. I don’t have time to play these games,” she said.

Olivia asked the I-TEAM to only use her first name and not identify her service branch. She hired her own moving company to move her family from Florida to Maryland, but she says the money she got for moving herself didn’t even begin to cover it.

“I’m in the hole roughly $7,500,” said Olivia.

Meredith: “And again, this wasn’t a move you wanted. You were ordered to.”

Olivia: “Right. This is an order.”

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Kaitlyn Jones is a newlywed. She says HomeSafe was a no-show on moving day.

However, they eventually coordinated packers and movers.

Jones and her husband left for California, but she says everything they own sat in Florida for weeks.

“They knew that my husband was about to be leaving, and I was gonna be here alone,” said Jones. “And they just didn’t really seem to care.”

Before he reported for duty, Jones’ husband posted a review on HomeSafe’s Facebook page, saying he was calling the police and reporting his goods were stolen.

HomeSafe Alliance removed all reviews, and posted that their “Facebook recommendations feature” was no longer available.

“That seems pretty sketchy,” said Jones. “It shouldn’t be like that. People should be able to put their opinions and their experiences out there publicly.”

Meanwhile, Jones’ husband left on a ship, leaving her totally alone in an empty house in a place where she didn’t know anyone.

“Finally, just yesterday my stuff got delivered to me, so it was almost four weeks past the required delivery date,” said Jones.

Unpacking the HomeSafe Allaince rollout

HomeSafe Alliance has a $17.9 billion contract to handle all military moves. The transition period was supposed to start in 2023 and take nine months. Instead, it took 18 months.

Here we are in 2025, and the program has only rolled out to roughly 94 installations, including Fort Eisenhower. By this May, it’s supposed to be handing moves at all installations.

“I think we have a catastrophic train derailment coming for peak season,” said Megan Harless.

You could call her an accidental activist.

For years, she ran a blog called “The Military Spouse Chronicles.” She now runs a website and social media pages helping military families “PCS Like A Pro.”

“The previous program, or what’s called the Legacy program now, you know, it wasn’t perfect,” said Harless.

In 2018, she posted an open letter to the military, asking for more transparency in the moving process.

Someone suggested turning it into a petition.

“So, I was like, sure. Whatever. Put it into Change.org and posted the link. This was on a Friday, and I completely expected it to die off in Internet land over the weekend,” said Harless.

More than 100,000 signatures later, it got the attention of Congress, and Harless was invited to sit on a spouse advisory .

She says the legacy program started to improve, but then, a private company stepped in.

“So it’s taken almost 11 months to deliver less than 1,000 shipments, and peak season is 8,000 shipments a week,” she said.

Meredith: “Would you call this program a disaster?”

Harless: “Yes. Right now, I absolutely would.”

Already, military families are paying the price.

“People are missing their report dates and it’s, it’s crazy,” said Golgart.

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Jones said: “My husband’s out here trying to serve his country and also take care of his family. When HomeSafe isn’t doing their part, it was harder on him to do his part.”

Meredith: “I feel like I’m talking to the same person over and over again. Slightly different circumstances, exact same experience.”

Olivia: “Yep. That’s because we have to use the same system, right? We’re all using the same system because we’re required to.”

Harless has started a new petition. She says rates families are being paid to move themselves are lower than they used to be, leaving families with no choice but to use HomeSafe or face spending money out-of-pocket.

You can read more about her petition here.

HomeSafe Allaince response

HomeSafe Alliance declined the I-TEAM’s request for an interview, but a company spokesperson did email a response to some of the questions we had.

1. How many moves has HomeSafe Alliance completed?

HomeSafe has delivered more than 1,300 moves to date, and there are more than 7,800 moves awarded to HomeSafe from the DoD so far, with the majority of the moving still in the future.

2. How many of those moves have been on time?

While the majority of HomeSafe’s moves have been successful, logistical challenges have caused delays for some moves in these early developmental stages of our program. We are thoroughly committed to working through these issues and providing reliable and timely services to military families. We are dedicated to ing our service and ensuring their needs are met with the highest level of care.

3. It is our understanding HomeSafe does not have a network of transportation service providers large enough to execute all PCS moves, hence the roll-out in phases and delays. What are the challenges HomeSafe has faced when securing this network? What is HomeSafe doing to expand that network?

HomeSafe Alliance is leading a historic reform of the military move system, bringing about a necessary change which military families have demanded for many years. A transformation of this magnitude has brought inevitable challenges, but HomeSafe is navigating them diligently to ensure we deliver high-quality, timely moves to military service and their families.

HomeSafe has faced interference from those in the moving industry who want to preserve the status quo, a legacy move system that has repeatedly failed military families. These industry opponents are pressuring moving companies not to perform HomeSafe’s moves in a calculated effort to stifle HomeSafe’s network growth. Despite this interference, HomeSafe’s network of high-quality service providers continues to grow as GHC volume grows.

USTRANSCOM sets the pace of the GHC rollout, and the schedule has always been a deliberate, phase-in approach to minimize the risk of disruption to military families. This timeline has been guided by the development of transformative technology to enhance the GHC: HomeSafe Alliance’s HomeSafe Connect platform and the government’s MilMove. HomeSafe’s network has had no bearing on USTRANSCOM’s decision to use a phased-in approach.

4. How many moves first assigned to HomeSafe have been canceled and handled under the legacy system?

For this question, they said to refer to USTRANSCOM.

5. Families report movers did not show up, but the portal still showed movers arriving/packing. Familes were told those were “automated” messages that could not be turned off. This raises concerns about the portal not accurately reflecting what’s happening. What has been done to address this?

We have fixed an internal scheduling issue that caused some incorrect automated messages to be sent.

6. Families have expressed concerns about the following: significant delays in pickup and delivery, poor packing resulting in damaged/broken goods, poor communication about shipment status and families being told their belongings are “in transit” when they are still at the original location. What is HomeSafe doing to address those issues?

HomeSafe is focused on continuously improving all of our systems and processes to ensure we provide exceptional service to military and their families. We are implementing additional measures to strengthen our network’s agility and to minimize the risk of future delays. We are onboarding and training new highly qualified moving partners to service relocations.

We also have several process improvements underway to enhance our 24/7 customer service. These include more proactive communication occurrences and standardizing our internal processes to ensure service receive the most timely, accurate information. HomeSafe has also further streamlined our claims process to provide as much as possible whenever something goes wrong.

Further, we are dramatically growing our team as we employ some of the brightest minds in logistics and relocation. We prioritize hiring military veterans and active-duty military spouses who understand the stresses of the PCS process, relate to our customers, and are personally committed to improving this system for the benefit of all military families.

7. Why did HomeSafe turn off comments on social media and remove the Facebook recommendation section?

Unfortunately, opponents of the GHC have spread disinformation on social media to military service and their families to exaggerate the scale of issues and to cause unnecessary fear and anxiety about the new system. This disinformation campaign sparked the intended reaction.

8. Families are suggesting a “tactical pause” of the program as some of these issues are worked out. Would you agree with that, or do you believe HomeSafe is prepared to keep rolling out new locations?

HomeSafe is prepared to move forward with the phase-in schedule as set by USTRANSCOM. The GHC program is the future of military moves, and HomeSafe is committed to repairing the system that military families complained about for decades and has consistently fallen short of what they deserve.

9. When will HomeSafe be ready to take over all military moves?

See answer to question 8.

10. Some families tell me they are concerned about a lack of transparency. They point to having much more information under the legacy program. I’m told when they ask for information that was provided under the legacy program, they are denied because it’s “proprietary information.” Will there be any efforts to compare what information was available under the legacy program and provide that same information?

If a family is asking HomeSafe Customer Care for information about their move, that’s not proprietary information, and we provide it to them.

With HomeSafe at the helm, the GHC will be a game-changer in of transparency. In the legacy move system, the complicated move management and subcontracting structure makes it

extremely difficult to know whom to call when something goes wrong. Under GHC, HomeSafe has one number to call, and customers can call us 24/7.

Also, under the legacy system, there is no universal IT platform with readily accessible move documents, pre-move survey results, or a digital inventory; in fact, those functions are mostly performed on paper forms which makes finding information very frustrating. In contrast, our platform HomeSafe Connect is a fully transformative product that we are improving every day thanks to we receive directly from military , USTRANSCOM, and our moving partners.

11. Families are concerned about the accuracy of the customer satisfaction survey. (Some tell me the legacy program had to step in because HomeSafe couldn’t find movers did not get a survey. They’re worried their negative experience wasn’t recorded, thus tainting the data.) Can you provide more information about who is given that survey? Will the raw data from those surveys be released?

The Customer Satisfaction Survey is istered by the Department of Defense. Any questions about data or data collection should be directed to USTRANSCOM.

12. What is HomeSafe Alliance’s bonus structure? To date, how many bonuses have been given to HomeSafe?

There is no bonus structure in the GHC.

HomeSafe Alliance’s spokesperson also had this to say about a blog: “I wanted to make sure you saw this blog from a third-party military spouse group called Wives of the Armed Forces. We are not d with them, but they wrote about the misinformation campaign there has been online over the last several weeks. You might find it helpful: The Truth Behind Military PCS Moves: Exposing Misinformation.”

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