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How I got Burned on my DITY Move!

Nomar116

Registered User
pilot
This post is long overdue but I realized I need to post it here to warn others, to tell a good story, and see if anyone has any ideas around this one.

The short version:

You can only ship 600# to P'cola unless you have follow-on orders. Which is stupid. But works out because dumb NAVY will pay you per diem.

The long version:

I moved down to P'cola from Kansas in September. My XO and staff constantly educated me on how clever doing DITY moves early in your career for a big pay-day can be so I took the bait.

Background: If you do not have "follow-on orders" which indicate where you will be doing Primary training, your orders are NOT PCS orders. But they sure look like it with the words PCS plastered all over them. Instead, you are TDY in Pensacola until your orders for Primary are cut. This means you are not entitled to move the normal allotted 10k#, instead only 600# of HHG can come with you. Which would have meant.... my closet. And yea, I'm a guy.

Well like I said I was stationed in Kansas. Our nearest Navy base is Fort Leavenworth and oh yea, that's definitely NOT Navy. We took a trip to this Army Fort for our PCS brief from the Personal Property Procurement Office. This office was one of many along my way that mistakenly omitted the fact that we were not entitled a full move, and schedule us as if we were. They scheduled my roomy for a full-on 2k# PCS move and set me up for my money-hungry DITY move. I estimated I would move 2000# of stuff the 1000 miles to Pcola. Using a handy little table they provided me with (and I memorized) I came to find that, with this estimate, this meant over $2000 would be coming my way, before taxes. I got excited. I bought a big screen.

****Side Note....A rough estimate for how much money you're getting paid for a DITY move depends on the weight you move and the distance you move it. You will get paid 95% of what they'd pay a professional....

That means for a move of 1000 miles you will get paid between $0.75 and $1.25 per pound moved. The return is diminishing to discourage those of us with LOTS of weight from doing DITY moves. A person with only 500# can expect to get paid close to $1.25 / pound while someone with over 8000# will get paid much less, around $0.75 / pound.

Also, this pay-rate is based on what range of weight your move falls within. Your highest pay bracket comes between 500-999#, with the rate diminishing as mentioned above. To make the most money you would want to be at the top of the lowest bracket. For example, you would benefit by transporting 999# at $1.25/pound as opposed to 1000# at $1.10/pound. The range for these factors increased in multiples of two, (great for ease of memorization) starting from 500; something like the following:

500-999 , 1000- 1999, 2000-3999, 4000-7999, 8000 - ....

In the end this is pretty trivial; "mental masturbation," my engineering professor would have called it. But neat if your into this kinda thing.

******End side note.

Where was I?

Oh yea, I bought a big screen. Whoops.

September rolled around, I had my counseling paperwork from Fort Leavenworth in hand, and I rented the biggest tow-behind U-haul I could find and loaded it chalk-full of crap. 3000# worth of crap to be approximate. I was excited cuz I was getting paid. To those of you not keeping up... something to the tune of over $3000 (before taxes). Along the way I burned money on expensive hotels in every college town I knew friends in (tax right-off) and had a blast. Nice hotels ended up being worth it even without the nice paycheck to write them off against but that's another topic. Things were going great. My truck even made the trip!

Great that is...Until I got to the PSD and the Personal Property Office in Pcola. I limped my truck in after unloading my 3/4 ton U-haul, the transmission in shambles, but still grinning ear to ear expecting my legit hard-work to pay off as I pick up my fat "promotion-check." Promotion? You know the one they give you when you transition from the adolescent life as a stash ensign waiting it out at ROTC to the grind-it-out career of an a-pool veteran? I was wrong.

Turns out I might as well have stored that U-haul at Mom's house and weighed the backseat of my truck. Apparently we Ensigns don't have previous-lives or "personal belongings!"

Uniforms and toiletries of 3oz or 600#, whichever is less, in a plastic bad of course, 'ok' ...
Big screen bought prematurely with DITY move bonus-check, not 'ok.'

So they broke the bad news. As SNA's (note SNFOs stop reading here [or way above], none of this applies to you) our ACC code is 341, temporary flying status (which it clearly states on your orders, right below PERMANENT duty station, surrounded by instructions on how to correctly complete your PCS move). My mistake. The 10k# rule does not apply to us until we have orders to Primary. No big DITY check for me until I move all my stuff again, to Corpus. Or Vance:eek:.

My roommate who unknowingly swindled Leavenworth to ship her HHGs to Pcola, you ask? She can expect a bill in something around a year for the move.

But wait! My roommate and I were MISCOUNCELED! In other words, since Fort Leavenworth's head was further up their..... than my own... there might still be a chance. In fact, since it wasn't my roommate’s fault, it was Leavenworth's, when she is billed she'll be able to dispute the charge and it should get dropped, no harm and a free move for her! But for me? Well turns out the Navy's a little more stingy when it comes to cutting a check vs. forgiving a debt. No matter that I was miscounceled in the same way she was, I can expect no reimbursement.

And the kicker. By sending us here TDY some people (with follow-on orders) are able to collect per diem. Those living in the Pcola area and willing to move once they finish API and head over to Whiting will collect a fat per diem check for their whole API/IFS/A-pool "Battle of the Midway" experience.

Rumor has that even those of us transitioning to Corpus can try and collect the same check when we arrive there. So while one person is to tight on the purse to just PCS us here for permanent duty, another gets screwed out of way more money having to cut unnecessary per diem checks to Aviators living in permanent housing for months waiting for log jams of students to clear out....In fact, I heard at my stash job one of the a-pool veterans before me, that hung out for just about 6 months med-down before moving on, collected over a $10k per diem check. Now this is great resource management! And all I have to show for it is a sob story about how I tried to game the system with a huge DITY move and ended up short a couple extra Armani suits. Like I really wear Armani.

Oh well... at least I have a big screen. On credit. I'm off to try and fill out some per diem paperwork at PCS. Maybe I'll catch Uncle Sam blinking.
 

tk628

Electronic Attack Savant
pilot
geez you should really do a search... just kidding.. Same thing happened to me.. but there is a bit of saving grace, if you A) stay in P'cola for more than 120 days and your 'TDY' orders are changed to PCS orders, or B)Sent to Corpus.

Its going to be a cluster either way, but because P'cola to Corpus is shorter than KS to Corpus its cheaper for the Navy to move all your stuff. They will pay to move all the stuff on your next and all future moves. 10K lbs...

Basically it's a crap deal all the way around. My XO, told me the same thing, an Navy O-5 at Vance went as far as calling the Bupers, because my move wasnt caught until after I had made my second move to vance from P'cola,

On the other hand.. I got a $2k perdiem check for being in P'cola for 3 months. $10/day for food plus mileage from my school.. but you don't get that till primary..
 

jollygreen07

Professional (?) Flight Instructor
pilot
Contributor
geez you should really do a search... just kidding.. Same thing happened to me.. but there is a bit of saving grace, if you A) stay in P'cola for more than 120 days and your 'TDY' orders are changed to PCS orders, or B)Sent to Corpus.

Okay.. so lemme get this straight. if you are in P-cola in excess of 120 days, and you are going to Corpus, you should expect a fat per-diem check? My 180 day mark will come and go on the 5th of January and I won't even have started API yet. Should I talk to someone at PSD?
 

Nomar116

Registered User
pilot
I'm really not that hard pressed for the money. So a per diem check is fine by me. I might make it 120 days, but I havn't heard that about orders getting changes... that's useful information!

You mentioned Corpus. Are we actually entitled per diem when we move there? The problem with me getting Corpus is not that they are willing to move my stuff, its that I still want my DITY move check. Which means I can load it all up, do it one more time, and get paid for a single move...

Side note... I think I'm entitled to the move distance (if I DITY) between Kansas and Corpus, not Pcola and Corpus. While on the phone with that PCS hotline they tried telling me that since my things are now here, they won't pay to "bring them from Kansas" which I claim they should have to do since as far as they know thats where its all sitting. If the hotline attendant is right the Navy could actually SAVE MONEY AGAIN because I shortened the move distance for them! Again, all this only matters if I decide to do a second DITY.

I'll feel far less screwed if I'm actually entitled per diem at Corpus. Then it all makes sense and is pretty much a wash. We were told when we checked in, though, that the per diem clock didn't start until the Corpus orders were cut...so the start of API. Which makes no sense at all.

The moral... SHOULD HAVE DONE A SEARCH.... HA, but then again I had no reason to suspect I WASN'T entitled 10k#, all my friends were NFOs or married with follow-on orders!
 

tk628

Electronic Attack Savant
pilot
Correction!
if you are in P'Cola for 120+ days YOU WILL NOT GET A PER DIEM CHECK...

WHY?... because your original orders are changed to PCS.. so the 2400# you did not get paid for to move down... you can go back and collect the money....

ALSO.... since a P'cola to Corpus would be your second PCS.. you should be able to swing DLA which is still $1300
 

Nomar116

Registered User
pilot
Did the numbers and I will also be 120 days in after Jan 5th. If I hadn't JUST started IFS this week I woulda reached that point having done NOTHING AT ALL! And boy that tidbit would really void this whole post. And be awesome! Ha.
 

Nomar116

Registered User
pilot
What is DLA??

Also, I heard that story of the Ensign getting 6 months per diem from a YNC I was stashed with... seems credible so is this no per diem / changed to PCS true?? Will we get 120 days of per diem?
 

tk628

Electronic Attack Savant
pilot
What happened to me is that the lady told me I was only allowed 600#'s out of P'cola since that is what I was supposed to bring.. NOT TRUE its a FULL PCS.. so I only brought 2000# of essentials (couch, bed, ect) and left a bunch of stuff in P'cola.

Well when NAVSUP ran my thing, they took my original move from 4500# to 600# creating a $3000 debt, and paid me for moving 2000# from P'cola, and I was like WTF... in the end my paycheck got garnished for 2 pay periods, and I had to take leave drive back to P'cola to get the stuff I left, weigh it, and drive it all back to Oklahoma to get my money back. It was a serious pain!
 

tk628

Electronic Attack Savant
pilot
What is DLA??

Also, I heard that story of the Ensign getting 6 months per diem from a YNC I was stashed with... seems credible so is this no per diem / changed to PCS true?? Will we get 120 days of per diem?

Dislocation allowance... its $ to pay for things like rent and utility deposits

You might get 120 days of perdiem but it should be like $10/day=$1200 for meals and $.48/mile from KS, and travel perdiem of $99/day for your drive from KS.(this is based on GOVT moving days 350 miles a day... so $297), which means you SHOULD be looking at about a $2000 check if you get paid the per diem.. either way.. at 120 days.. you can rerun your move as a PCS.. and get all the coin back
 

FLYTPAY

Pro-Rec Fighter Pilot
pilot
None
New ensigns.....do not give up or take no for an answer.....keep the press on and fight the man for your right to party......the key is to not give up and remember that there is always a way.
 

KSUFLY

Active Member
pilot
Go BDCP and you won't have all these problems. Just got to fight for the DLA with BDCP because PSD doesn't understand that you were "prior enlisted." :)

Another quick pay question for those that may know...I was promoted to 0-2 and my LES still shows my pay as an 0-1. Who do I need to speak to about getting this updated? Thanks.
 

phrogpilot73

Well-Known Member
Another quick pay question for those that may know...I was promoted to 0-2 and my LES still shows my pay as an 0-1. Who do I need to speak to about getting this updated? Thanks.
How recently were you promoted? It usually takes a pay period or two to update.
 

insanebikerboy

Internet killed the television star
pilot
None
Contributor
Few things, as Flytpay said, don't give up. From what I gather from your post is that the people in Leavenworth told you that you'd be doing a DITY. It also seems that they gave you a paper trail to that effect.

What that means is that if you've got the papers to prove they set up your move that way, you may have a shot. Having the papers is key, as if you just try and say "someone told me"....that won't fly. Just keep pushing it up further and further. If the first person you talk to says no, politely ask to speak to someone else (a supervisor, etc). If the papers prove it, you should be good.

Along the way I burned money on expensive hotels in every college town I knew friends in (tax right-off) and had a blast

Just so you know, you get per diem for your travel days. Per diem is designed to cover the cost of food and lodging enroute. Since you get per diem, you are being paid by your employer to move so what you spend on hotels is not tax deductible.


The biggest takeaway, always get everything in writing.
 

Nomar116

Registered User
pilot
I do have the paperwork, and I pushed really hard at the time. I was shot down numerous times and while I usually never take no for an answer I thought my hopes were done. Yes, I have the document showing how I was miscounseled and this is what my roommate will use to avoid PAYING for a PCS move.

We are not even allowed to submit for our PCS allotment, i.e. Per diem of food and travel expenses until we arrive at our PCS, so Corpus. I was also told the best way to submit the DITY reimbursement paperwork was to wait until arriving at my PCS as well. I can't remember the logic there, maybe they're just trying to put off a bunch of paperwork.

Either way, I will look into this 120 day business. If I can get my orders changed to PCS then I think I will do that. Definately solves the move problem getting me paid for my DITY, I'll even change the topic of this post to "How I got burned on my DITY move and Airwarriors saved the day! Anyone disagree with this, maybe hold off on changing the orders to collect the per diem check at the end of the ride? I will probably be here an extra 3 months....

Whatdya think?
 
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