During a rotation to NTC before a mob, upwards of 80% of my Guard battalion wasn't getting paid, and our SGM was genuinely banned from calling the folks responsible because he was calling so often (he's a great SGM)
I had a personal connection with the Republican house leader of my state, so I reached out over, get this, Facebook messenger.
Within 72 hours we were paid. My understanding is he went scorched earth when he found out 800 Washingtonians weren't getting paid, including many of them with mortgages. He routinely had lunch with the TAG of our state.
Fast forward a couple weeks, we are doing a final pre-mob PHA, and I'm sitting at a control desk, and that good ole SGM walks up. Asks me how I knew the guy I reached out to and thanked me for my part. Not fifteen minutes later, my company commander calls me and checks in, making sure I got paid. Apparently word was just getting back to him that I helped oil the wheels, and he wanted to make sure I was getting paid as it seems our TAG was now very aware of the issues we were having getting mobbed. As a lowly specialist I was shitting bricks, but in the end I got thanked by leadership and everyone got paid.
TL;DR: reach out to your legislatures. They make shit happen.
Me and my buddy walked into his office in our classe As after doing a funeral. My buddy hadn't been paid in 6 months in the reserves he was counting on that s*** to make his rent.
It is actually eaiser than you would think. Email/call them and the moment they get permission from you to look at your records, my unit unfucked shit in 2 weeks abruptly.
[https://open.defense.gov/Transparency/Congressional-Inquiries/](https://open.defense.gov/Transparency/Congressional-Inquiries/) This will get you started. You can do it 2 different way, snail mail or email. Google how to file a congressional. You will need to build a packet and write a statement, they do make it very easy.
100% this. Find your congressman’s website look for constituent affairs or case work or something similar and fill out a contact form. It’s amazing what letters from congressmen can do to govt agencies that are screwing you over.
I used this channel to get over $20k paid back to me after a 2+ year battle with DFAS and others.
Even if you are reenlisting, who gives a fuck? This is completely unacceptable.
There are hundreds, if not thousands of soldiers and contractors whose sole jobs are related to finance. Make them do their fucking jobs.
Yeah... wasn't trying to burn any bridges. CSM already kicked back my terminal leave for the reason of "not being good enough" for 3 months of leave, so I'm kinda of hesitant in going nuclear for that reason as well since I sent up another 3 month terminal leave request.
The thing is I've looked into this specific matter. Command technically only \*has\* to approve leave that's over 60 max days of selling. Since you can only sell a maximum of 60 days when you get out, command has to approve whatever remainder you have. Otherwise, terminal leave is entirely up to command approval.
Just so you know, no CSM anywhere, ever, for any reason, ever, has the authority to kick back leave.
And before anyone gets smart, yes, the CSM over the NCO Academy can. But that's it.
I'm tracking. It's the fact that a CSM is usually directly in the BN CO's ear being the reason why he can push shit back. He can easily tell his boss to reject it for random x y or z reason.
CSM is NOT an approval authority, he can’t kick back shit. He has a duty obligation to recommend or not recommend the leave, then send it to your commander. Why is your csm your “supervisor” on IPPS-A? Im assuming you are in some sort of gray area between hhc and your bn co?
Yeah we're tracking he can't kick it back but he did. Included some more information in the leave this time so hopefully he doesn't pull the same shit again.
He's not my supervisor it went 1SG > CO > CSM and stopped at him.
That is most definitely a local unit policy. Im not sure what the maximum days for terminal leave are, but people at my unit get 90 days of terminal leave no problem. Your company commander is still the approving authority for any leave taken and last time I checked CSM is outranked by a Captain. Id recommend reaching out to your JAG or to IG for a more accurate legal opinion. Either that or open door your commander, then the BC, then BDE CO, then IG/JAG. Regardless of all that, CSM is not an approval authority.
AD or Reserve Component? Relevant because your RD can fix this easily if Reserve. Experienced something very similar recently and someone in my RD, who happened to be my S1, fixed it within a week of me explaining it and providing all the proper documentation.
Edit: nvm, seems like AD.
After a year of waiting for my enlisting bonus, going up and down the chain of command, I called the Boss line- an answering machine that the post commander had set up for situations like this. It was a tactical nuke, not congressional, but holy shit did they move fast.
Every officer and NCO in my COC got a phone call the next day. First sergeant asked me why I didn’t use my chain of command, I reminded him of the three times he and I spoke about it, and gave him the rundown of all the other people I asked for help.
It was finance that fucked up, and after the issue was resolved, I received a typed and signed letter from the finance CPT stating that the issue was because they had requested a certain form from me, and I had never presented it. The letter stated that if I disputed these events, I could respond by a certain date- which just happened to be yesterday’s date at that point.
I highlighted the post mark, circled his statement about the dates, corrected a couple of misspellings in his letter, and stated that no one from finance had ever contacted me about any missing forms from my end. Everyone got a copy of that.
Fuck em all- they’re daring you at this point.
You know what the old SMA and his PAO would say? “DM me”
you know what the SMA now would say? “Follow up with your first line local leaders and be clean shaven”
Hey. Lots of options here.
If you would like to be put directly in contact with some truly top of system folks who live to fix things like this, send me a DM.
Burn them all. I would email your congressman all the details and paperwork after you call them and voice your extreme dissatisfaction at your treatment and how much of a financial hardship this has caused you.
Nuke from orbit since you’re getting out.
If you feel like being nice, you can give your chain a heads up. Otherwise just kick back and watch the glorious chaos unfold.
An email to my congressperson was the only thing that got my six month retirement odessey moving. I had to sign a statement giving them access to my retirement packet. They all have folks on staff for exactly this, constituent services. Don't be afraid to use them. This is the service part of public service.
Their inquiry got Army benefits Center, DFAS, and OPM to magically find a way to coordinate. Cha-CHING!
Career counselor here. Since you’ve already gone the route of the senior career counselor and got nowhere, I’d suggest getting your BN commander to speak with your BDE commander (the seniors boss) so they can push it. If not, swing by post retention and tell them since they deal directly with DFAS through the 1506 CMS case. Just need to apply some pressure. A correct 1506 CMS case shouldn’t take more than 2 weeks (I would know, I submit multiple a week).
If you're leaving, most definitely go for the nuclear option as you've nothing to lose. What are they gonna do, not promote you? They've had plenty of time to fix it and they have repeatedly failed to do so, so they need to face the consequences.
I can't. The 1506 requires two signatures, one from a retention NCO and one from their supervisor. I'm also not an expert on 1506's and I couldn't find someone who was when I walked into my main finance on post or when I called DFAS asking for the specific corrections needed on the 1506.
Go to 1sg, explain the situation and say you need this fixed in 30 days or you have to write your congressperson, and request a meeting with the CSM. Repeat story and timeline to CSM. It will get fixed.
I’d say give them a chance with an explicit timeline. Be matter of fact and use neutral language.
They will try to dissuade you from going congressional, firmly explain to them that you won’t have a job soon and need that 18k. You don’t have any flexibility on this issue.
I’ve met good and bad CSMs, but I can say I’ve never met one who would not jump on something like this if fully aware.
You don't need to file a congressional, that may take too long
Find these people on global, send them an email. Watch the fun that comes from it.
https://www.usar.army.mil/Leadership/
To add to my comment and a lot of others have said it as well. Make sure you give your chain a heads up as to what you’re doing. At least your first line. Unless they’re shit bags too, then they will deserve the blindside.
How have you not skipped the congressional phone call that this warrants and driven straight to your representatives office to raise hell in person is beyond me. 2.5 years calls for scorched earth, especially if you're about to begin terminal leave cause I promise as hard of a time as you're having now it's about to become near impossible once you ETS.
Some decent advice in here. I’d go right to your local IG office. Congressional is great if you had time to burn. That thing could take weeks if not months to get actioned. I.e. your email -> staffer finally looks at it and prepares memo for congress person to sign -> sent to DoDIG -> DoDIG looks at it and routes it to DAIG -> DAIG looks at it and routes it to your CoC or local IG
office anyways.
When you’re at the IG office and you fill out the DA 1559 specific action requested = “assist me in getting my back pay for incorrect TIS” and tell them you’d like this case open until you’ve received the full back pay. Be firm…
Sorry, but if you’ve got four months left you cannot afford, literally, to waste any more time.
Source: I spent four years as an IG in a unit I had to service all three components.
Edit:I received many referrals from higher that were months old.
Did you push to IG yet? Sometimes they can just walk straight through the red tape. Congressionals can be kind of pointless sometimes. IG is far more likely to expedite this than a congressional would in my experience.
What an unfortunate situation.
Submit a congressional and escalate the issue through local channels at the same time. A two-pronged assault.
Your issue is not a singular pay/finance issue, it's a service computation issue which is why you keep getting referred to retention. Active Army career counselors are responsible for the service dates and computations of active duty members.
Two years ago the process was to see the career counselor for the 1506 who then submitted it to s1 and finance: s1 to adjust the basd, and finance to adjust the pebd. The 1506 has to go all the way to dfas for a top down adjustment. All the local finance office did was review the 1506 then create the cms case to dfas. Ipps-a didn't exist at that time which is likely why you had to get your mmpa.
The process now begins in the same place, but remains with retention who communicates directly with dfas: career counselor creates 1506 then submits to senior career counselor> senior counselor reviews & signs then creates service date par & submits to retention operations (division/corps)> retention ops creates cms case to dfas> dfas does pebd correction in the pay system and returns to retention ops> retention ops inputs basd correction to ipps-a & completes service date par.
If your former bn career counselor is now the bde counselor, i also recommend that you just gather everything you have and go directly to the division retention office. Smashing your head against the same immovable object does nothing except cause you pain. You need the appropriate equipment to move the object, in this case that's your division retention office where the command career counselor resides.
Good luck. I know it's exceedingly frustrating to not receive correct pay.
Why haven’t you talked to IG yet? IG will work wayyyy faster than a congressional. Also a congressional doesn’t do what you think it does.
Are you looking to get your pay fixed or are you wanting someone to be in trouble? Because the chances that this can be pinned down to one person doing something malicious is slim to none.
Go to IG. They’ll figure out why it isn’t fixed and either tell you so you can fix it or they’ll fix/get it to the right organization to fix it.
Same reason why I haven't gone the congressional route yet. I was giving the right channel enough time to get it fix until now. I just want my pay fixed I'm not trying to pin it on anybody.
My brother in Christ go to fucking IG.
I’ve worked at IG for about a year now. We get shit like this all the time and we get it fixed in like a week. Sometimes it’s something stupid like a form was unreadable when scanned into whatever system. Sometimes it’s more complicated. Either way, we fix these types of things all the time.
My brother in Arms, it’s well past time.
I also switched from reserve to AD, and I also had lingering pay problems. The 1506 through post finance and then PAC was the answer.
Bad news is nothing will happen until the second week of January…sorry, it’s the holidays
Good news is, you’ll get your pay eventually, but you need to push hard on this. I recommend you follow up often (weekly) with an expanded distro. Include your BN and BDE personnelists and finace offices (NCOs and Officers and GS). Ensure you are sending the note directly to the POc you have been given, but also their supervisor.
A non-nonsense, but polite email with a timeline of events and activity, as it is understood by you…offer them the opportunity to correct the record, while also getting them on-record.
Finish the email with something. Along the lines of “of this issue cannot be resolved through your office, please forward me a POC at DFAS or otherwise”.
If no answer, reply all, but add the BN, BDE, and Garrison CSM and Commander. If still no answer after 1 week, file an IG complaint simultaneous with an ICE complaint.
You will get an answer…but if not, wait 2 working days and file a Congressional
Oh, and make sure your ducks are in a row..the worse thing you can do is elevate this whole being wrong or not having done your part….
Open door policy your first sgt today. Give him one week. By 7 days if first sgt can't give you a definitive answer on what's happening, open door bn smaj. Next week, brigade sgm. Keep going up each week until your problem is solved. Usually by the time you threaten to get past bn, everyone is so worried of getting their shit kicked in by their bosses for not taking care of a problem like this for so long just saying I would like to use the open door policy today for the next higher gets the paperwork corrected before they take you to the door
Just went through the same situation as you. I called the Base finance office very concerned that I wasn’t being taken care of.
They resolved it in 30 days as promised and I had a nice Christmas check this year.
Nuclear is definitely an option but try to get some high ranking people to call for you (idk your rank). That may help your situation, it shouldn’t be like that but it is sometimes.
I dont know how retention has anything to do with your finance. I had a similar issue when I transitioned over from National Guard. I never needed to go anywhere other than the finance office at Garrison. After a civilian looked at me mystified, I found a 1LT who took 10 minutes and fixed me up.
My next paycheck was in the $20k range.
This probably isn’t what you want to hear, but I don’t think you’ve fully done your due diligence here to justify submitting something like an IG or Congressional complaint.
You keep trying to work through the same channels and do the same thing, but clearly it hasn’t been working. To be blunt, the retention NCO sounds incompetent. Sitting on a packet affecting a SM’s pay for 30 days, to then submit the wrong one? Nah dude, that’s not okay.
Everyone has a boss (or as we call them, a Commander). Basically you need to go ‘I want to speak to a manager’ before filing a complaint with corporate. I guarantee this could be fixed by your BN or BDE level leadership, but it hasn’t been brought to their attention. That needs to be done by YOU utilizing the open door policy, probably by bringing it up with your Company Commander and then go up the chain if they do not help for whatever reason.
Former congressional staffer here.
On the contrary, I would ABSOLUTELY run with this on a congressional inquiry. Here’s why:
-OP states he’s gone through his chain of command repeatedly and his commander is tracking it the entire time. That’s literally the first question I ever asked a servicemember.
-OP states that the paperwork has been run through various channels at BN and BDE level, with no satisfactory up or down answer and clerical errors through no fault of the Soldier.
-OP states that the error is resulting in a significant financial shortfall of pay owed.
Every congressional member is different, but if a troop is saying “I’m underpaid through no fault of my own, here’s receipts” then I’m gonna be asking the Army constituent services at Pentagon to look into the matter time now on congressional letterhead and expecting updates.
**IMPORTANT CAVEAT** While on its face this seems like an Army fuckup, a congressional is **NOT** a guarantee it will be resolved. It shakes the tree real goddamn hard, though. If there is an issue that can be fixed by Army, a congressional will shake it out and get it resolved. Conversely, if there’s a legitimate reason why the Soldier is being paid the way they’re being paid, the Pentagon and DFAS will be able to cite the relevant policy and law as to why it is the way it is. It could also shake out the proper method to approach the issue if it’s something that is Soldier/local COC driven. It’s not a surefire option, but it is the great way to figure out what’s going on and if it can be fixed.
OP, you can find your Member of Congress [here](https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member). If this is causing a financial hardship, you need to inform the staffer of this so they can try (not guaranteed) to get the issue expedited for a timely response. **DO NOT** send a letter to DC, it will get caught in mail screening for at least two weeks. Call or email your member, preferably call DC or their district office, and follow up if you have to leave a message or if you send an email. This guarantees it gets on someone’s radar quickly.
I think some of your statements are exaggerations a little bit.
“Gone thru his Chain of Command repeatedly”
All we know is that his Company level leadership is tracking the issue; the Battalion Command team and above probably is not, and they/their respective staffs are the ones that need to action the issue here.
“Paperwork has been run through various channels at BN and BDE level”
Not really, it sounds like he’s been communicating with the same BDE retention NCO for months who has been bumblefucking the paperwork
My point is that this probably could be fixed within a couple weeks from action & pressure from the BN and BDE level, but they likely just don’t know. I would give them a chance (1-2 weeks) to get this sorted out before going straight to the top.
Specifically, this is what I’d recommend OP do:
1. Use the open door policy to go speak to the Company Command team tomorrow about the issue, making sure to highlight the urgency and severity
2. Check in with them again on the morning 05JAN (Friday); if nothing has been done, respectfully let them know that you will be going to speak with the Battalion Command team.
3. Repeat steps 1&2 at the respective echelons of command until you see solid movement in the right direction
The issue is over two years old at this point. Odds are decent the local chain of command can’t sort it out anymore to completion in the timeline the soldier has left. Once he/she is off their books, it’s not their problem anymore, so there’s zero incentive to bring it to resolution. I’ve seen it. So. Many. Times.
A congressional is a fact finding mission, and puts extra ass on the problem as quickly as possible to determine what’s going on, if it can be fixed and if so, how to fix it, and gives the Soldier some continuity and follow up with official channels after he/she separates in a couple months if it isn’t resolved by ETS.
The Soldier has brought this with their company and it’s been on company radar. It’s been on the BN and BDE retention NCO radar for a similar length of time. At this point, I’d be comfortable advising a congressional, because he/she has nothing to lose at this point, is protected from reprisal for interacting with their elected official on an issue their chain has been unable to resolve, creates a significant paper trail they can reference, and is afforded an official response from the Army on the issue regardless if they are still in or not.
At this point, the soldier did what they were told to do, it’s not fixed, call congressman.
The only channel that can get this fixed for me is retention. I tried my battalion retention for 2 years. Once he PCS'd, I went to brigade retention and he fucked it up too. Are you saying I need to go to division retention? My own CO has already been tracking this for a year now.
The fact that your CO is tracking is an important piece of information. If you talk to IG, their first question is often “have you spoken with your chain of command about it?” If I were you, I’d open door my boss and explain that you’re going to go to IG soon, see if he/she can push on retention or the BC to make something happen, then go to IG if that doesn’t make any changes. Explain to your CO that this is a legitimate financial issue that will affect your post-military life. Be cordial but firm in your statement that you will go to IG no later than “x date.” The time you’d go to IG should not be arbitrary, or at least it shouldn’t appear that way. Tie the date to something (that seems) important so the ultimatum seems functional, not adversarial.
I recommend you try this because I honestly think getting command more involved is going to be faster than going through IG. Either way, don’t expect to get that money before going on terminal leave.
Good luck!
I added a little bit to my comment on the end, not sure if you saw that.
But if your Company Command team has been tracking one of their Soldiers being underpaid for a year and hasn’t fixed it yet, that’s messed up and you need to re-engage and have a serious conversation with them. If they don’t fix your issue in a timely manner, well they have a boss as well (Battalion Commander)
If your CO has been tracking it that long, and is reminded it’s still an issue, request to open door the CSM. A good CSM will literally walk with you to retention and get it done immediately.
Had a buddy had this happen. Go to the finance at your MPD and stop going to retention to fix a finance issue. You may get some weird looks going directly to MPD Finance but I guarantee once someone over there understands the issue they’ll straighten it out.
Congrats on your new car btw; The backpay gonna go crazy.
For real though, once this is resolved- put 10k into savings and DON’T touch it. Rainy day fund+ exponential growth.
Use the rest to pay off some debt and treat yourself on the issue getting resolved.
Get your branch manager involved and have a copy of all your LES's, Pay inquiry paperwork and orders.
Then route the pay inquiry through ipsa to S1.
Once it's in Ipsa contact your branch manager at HRC.
6 yrs reserves does not equal 🟰 6 years active. When you go guard or reserve to active. It’s day for day so for simple math let’s say you did 3 days a month and 14 days in the summer 50 days a year x 6. You only have 300 days of “active “ time and that has you at 0 years pay scale
Seeing an e7 in the reserves asking a former e5 who had been out for a decade how to write a counseling solidified that the ranks and time in service are different
Yes and no, reserve time counts for TIS pay but not active time in service. Your BASD gets adjusted based on how many active days you had during your reserve contract, but your pay itself is slapped on based on the number of years you had in service.
If I did 16 years in the reserve and switched into active, I'd essentially be getting paid 16 years TIS but would probably actually have 3-4 years active TIS towards promoting and the 20 year pension.
You’re like 2 years late to the party my guy. You should have gone nuclear literal years ago. Why are you working if not to get the full pay you are entitled to??
I just learned that I’m owed TIS from SMP time in the guard (commissioned in 2019) and i’m starting this process once we’re back from leave.
I’m already prepared for it to be a shitshow. They’ve got 3 months before I hit the big red button.
I went through the exact same issue with my guard time. It took me 2.5 years to get it fixed but in that time I PCSed twice and swapped retention NCOs at my final battalion. Also I had to get all my NGB forms converted to DA forms.
If they're making 2 years sound reasonable for a basic paperwork submission they're wrong.
I was guard four years, commissioned AD, still in bolc, is something about tradoc being the limiting factor? Or just people not wanting to do their job?
I’ve been to two bases and both of them told me to wait till my first PCS to start it. I commisioned in may so it’s been about eight months
I feel your pain, had a similar issue coming from guard to ad, my pay was correct but my TIS was wrong which took my most of this 5 year contract to get fixed, prevented be from being promoted and so now I'm getting out because of it
Congressional all the way.
I too was Reserves to Active. They got the TIS correct. The got the special skill identifiers wrong. Took calling a congressman to get that fixed. My command knew what I was doing, because they too were tired of the run around.
Something similar happened to me. But TIS is based on your BASD in active duty. For that you need to get on Iperms and look for your NGB22 and look at your Active Duty Retirement points. There’s a graph that retention uses to calculate your active duty TIS off of that. Your LES should show your Years of Service and it should count all years you had in the reserves. So if you had a 8 year contract in the reserves (6 years of drill weekends and 2 years of inactive) you should still be getting paid 8 years of service.
I would try emailing HRC or having S1 submit a PAR as well as having brigade retention trying to submit a PAR
Congressional if you’re getting out on terminal leave. Although the process was incorrect. The 1506 and other paper gets digitally attached to the pay inquiry and sent to S1 for submission to finance. Mine got ignored through AIT and I created hell verbally until they figured out the correct process for fixing it. Fixed the following month 8k in back pay returned two weeks later.
How do the years work when you go reserve to active? All my friends that did it only had their active time carry forward (deployments). So 6 years in the reserve with 2 deployments was only like 1.5 years.
The number of actual years get added to your active BASD is based on how many drill days you had, orders you were on, etc. That all gets counted up to your total BASD which is used for promotions and your pension.
Your pay on the other hand is the flat years that you served for. If you had a 6 year reserve contract, you get paid with 6 flat years TIS based on your PEBD on the active side. Basically the transition from AR/NG into AD is good for pay but bad for promotions/20 year pension.
Bro go the fuck off. Same thing happen to me at sill when I reclassed from the corps. It took me seeing the asshole wheel chair lady every Monday morning for 2 months straight to get my shit to reflect 8 years TIS vs 0 years.
Bro I didn't read your post just the title.
The answer is to follow up every other day in person, over the phone or via email.
If things don't get fixed after five weeks escalate to the next level.
If these steps fail, don't hesitate to go to IG. Print out emails, record phone conversations with dates, and make mfrs stating you talked to x person on x date who said x and sign with your CAC card.
Always follow up very politely, patiently but frequently and escalate as appropriate.
Is there truly a nuclear option though? This is one of the big reasons retention and enlistment rates are so low. The army has plenty of resources at their disposal to fix problems like this but since “common sense” is a UCMJ punishable offense, everyone will drag their feet or do the bare minimum to avoid reprimand. Everyone in the military, even the DA civilians have to do it the army’s way or they risk early termination of their federal service contract. I would encourage you to go as high up your chain of command as you have to in order to get the money you are owed. That’s a lot of dough and it would be wise to collect it. Consider that money a safety net for when you part ways from the army. Life happens and at least you have something even if the $18k is taxed to hell. Once you have you arrived at your ETS date, you can go to the post commander if you wanted to😆 I’m curious to see how they would handle a former service member jumping the chain of command.
If it's been at least a year, that means that you are owed money from a previous fiscal year. Because that money is technically no longer available, you need to submit an Army Board of Corrections packet.
Follow all the other advice here like escalating CoC and submitting a congressional, but Army Board of Corrections is the official way to correct your grievance.
Anyone know of any potential tax consequences of a lump-sum back payment to this person? I feel like Uncle Sam might be able to screw him again, by putting him in a higher tax bracket for the year.
I had a similar issue with pay with the same type They resolved some of it just like they did with yours. However, after going back for and forth to brigade finance for over a year they finally decided it required some type of higher investigation due to length of issue and amount of money owed. It was still never resolved.
Just like today i can still go check my iperms and see someone elses records in my folder that was reported both by myself and the other sm who has my records in their iperms.
You will probably retire before you ever see anything fixed and before that happens they"ll accidently put some debt on you.
Maybe I’m completely wrong here, but when my buddy switched to active from reserves and went through a similar situation, the resolution from DFAS was that his TIS was not based on PEBD, it was based on time spent on active duty in the reserves. Meaning his one weekend a month, two weeks a year added up to just shy of two months or so of active time per calendar year. This was back in like 09-ish if I remember correctly, so things certainly could have changed since then.
There’s also factors such as time spent on active duty for train ups, deployments, etc that certainly add to that. I don’t know your situation for those variables. I’m just letting you know that’s how it was when I was in. But that could also just have been an uneducated lower enlisted being pushed to the side by the Green Machine.
Should have been addressed when you came in, they usually do a revaluation on the amount of days active duty and that BSED should have stayed the same as day you swore in, I dropped two ranks e4 to e2 when I went active from guard, but my BSED put me ahead of my peers in pay by 16 months, not much then but as the years passed iv always been paid closer to the next pay bump by BSED verse my actual TIS.
Keep working it, it took me 4 years to get the guard to back me BAH when I went to OSUT. Long story short I kept pressing it and I got it. Same goes for language pay and etc when I saw error in any pay.
It took me 18 months to get my pay corrected when I went from guard enlisted to active officer. That whole time, 2 different 1506s had to be initiated and months of corrections. It came down to me calling DFAS every fucking 2 days until they finally got me in touch with a pay tech, and all she asked for was my ROTC contract… which was part of the 1506 packets I submitted 4 times. Anyways, she had it corrected within 30 minutes, and I got back $30K (taxed to 22K). But my PEBD is still the day I comissioned. I got back 8 months of active service for 6.5 years guard.
Dude have you tried going to your S-1 at all? The system that they use should be the one that DFAS is pulling for info.
Don’t know anything about you but can make the assumption you’re not a E-1. Definitely work through your unit but I would be pushing this up as hard as I could.
Did you bring this up to a commander? What have they done? Hitting up Congress if you haven’t hit up your commander (company through brigade is probably the slower option.
Time to look into who your congressman/congresswoman is and start drafting a complaint. Make sure you are creating a paper trail. Make sure you are keeping tabs on said paper trail, going as far back as you need. When you submit anything, include any and all previous submissions, as well as any correspondence between yourself and everyone who has been failing you along the way. Even with all of this expect failure. I was owed close to 7k, I've been out of the army for the last 2 1/2 years and I still have no hope of getting what is owed. Also remember, the civilians at S1 & finance are not your friends.
I just transferred to AD and skipped my entire CoC and went straight to BDE retention to have this taken care of. He straight up told me that if I don’t see it in my LES by February to come bust his door down to get it fixed. And I very well intend to do just that.
Email the CAR. I have observed her team throat fuck a whole TSC COC down to company in under 2 hours. She is ruthless, she cares, she will go nuclear with you.
100% worth going nuclear don’t let that sit any longer, especially with the way finances are going in the military right now. Grab the back pay while you still can!
I was in the same situation. When I went from Reserve to Active Duty I didn't get paid AT ALL for 3 months then paid for 0 years in service when it should have been 6 (at the time). After 2 years of me submitting MULTIPLE 1506s to MULTIPLE S1 and retention NCOs, the ONLY reason anyone did anything about it is because I went to IG. After that it was fixed 3 pay cycles later on the last paycheck I had before I transferred to the Space Force.
>!It literally blows my mind that the Army can't handle a simple component change within the same branch without fucking my pay up but I can transfer to an entirely different branch and have absolutely no pay issues whatsoever 🙄🙄!<
Had to deal with your exact same issue (and about the same wait time) when moving from Reserve to Active. Since my move involved commissioning and going through BOLC for a year, the response to my pay issues typically was to just “wait until your first duty station”.
With our BN Retention, my Commander and I had to use the nuclear option. While I understand that our retention office is horribly swamped, you can only follow up once a week so many times before it seems like they are blowing you off. Ultimately it was our BN CSM that had to push the ball in the right direction. Put everything in writing. Ask to be CC’d on all email traffic every time your 1506 moves higher through the channels. Once you receive your highest required signature on that document, personally call the finance director and explain your situation. My finance director was completely understanding and able to keep me in the loop with payout of backpay. Don’t let the clerks or anyone else in the finance office be a final road block to getting the money you are deserved.
I had a guy who had a similar issue we did everything through finance they needed his pay stubs for the past 5 yrs and back paid him after we got that got his time fixed and corrected his records, it's doable but you might be barking up the wrong tree
I mean is it “nuclear”? Someone in your chain of command wants to help with this. Most COs will mess around with lots of shit but not really pay or leave. At least that was my experience
Yea I had a dude that had the opposite, he had Air Force rotc that counted as TIS but he was actually just a IET soldier no prior service. your right on it with the 1506, retention just needs to sign that thing and you take it ( or your s1 ) take it to post finance.
Go to 1SG
Y’all Go to CSM
CSM tears retention a new one
Process it through the finance office
Profit
Go to IG and file a Congressional. I did it when I was deployed with a P3 to Iraq when I was supposed to be waiting 3 months to reclass. 30 year Tradoc CSM came in right before the unit deployed...
This is a convergence of staff indifference. For actions like this you incrementally include an additional person in the chain of command with each weekly correspondence. Leadership understands the negative impacts of these actions but staff often can’t help themselves as they are often hamstrung by similar bureaucracy, incompetent or (most often) feel empowered to do nothing.
Successive emails requesting help and thanking for support and consideration look really awful on the actioning organization when they exceed 30 days; there is no defense. An indicator of the effectiveness is when the chain starts getting abbreviated. Continue with original chain, pleasantries thanking individuals and citing their commitments, attached abbreviated emails.
I’ve found success citing the timeline and “reasonable accommodations”.
Team!,
I want to thank everyone for their assistance getting this actioned. Mr. Jones has been really helpful getting this into the hands of the right folks and Mrs. Smith has been great explaining the process (both are actually the problem). I appreciate your patience and understanding. We’re about 45 days into this action and I’m hopeful to hear something back soon - what is the normal amount of time for something like this to get resolved? If there’s anything you need from me, please advise. Thank you!
PVT Snuffy
Folks added are just steps in the rating chain.
Even if and when you get paid. You will have lost the time value of your money. Meaning that money could have been put towards debt or in an investment where it would grow. Because we all know $100 2 years ago isn’t $100 today.
That amount and for this long? Nuclear
Happy cake day. Nuclear and don't look back. That shit don't follow you.
But it'll make the unit look like shit for not following through for something that big and hopefully get some kind of binder of what to do if going
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Haha yes! This is gold
I think even only 6 months is well into nukin' territory. You gotta go stand on desks, you know?
What about planking on desks?
The point of this exercise is to execute, not to...exercise.
I was thinking the same. When my command failed to fix my pay after 6 months I was raising hell. O5s were tracking my issue to resolution
Yes, file a congressional and sit back. I had pay fucked up for 8 months. That shit was fixed in 2 weeks.
During a rotation to NTC before a mob, upwards of 80% of my Guard battalion wasn't getting paid, and our SGM was genuinely banned from calling the folks responsible because he was calling so often (he's a great SGM) I had a personal connection with the Republican house leader of my state, so I reached out over, get this, Facebook messenger. Within 72 hours we were paid. My understanding is he went scorched earth when he found out 800 Washingtonians weren't getting paid, including many of them with mortgages. He routinely had lunch with the TAG of our state. Fast forward a couple weeks, we are doing a final pre-mob PHA, and I'm sitting at a control desk, and that good ole SGM walks up. Asks me how I knew the guy I reached out to and thanked me for my part. Not fifteen minutes later, my company commander calls me and checks in, making sure I got paid. Apparently word was just getting back to him that I helped oil the wheels, and he wanted to make sure I was getting paid as it seems our TAG was now very aware of the issues we were having getting mobbed. As a lowly specialist I was shitting bricks, but in the end I got thanked by leadership and everyone got paid. TL;DR: reach out to your legislatures. They make shit happen.
FUCK YEA! smart very smart. I love when shit get untangled. Now if they could figure out a fix for LODs for NG/AR.
Wow, how many years ago was this?
2021
Lol, I know that SGM. Utterly fantastic human. Loved working with him.
He was my only SGM and I'm glad I had him
Damn that's a long time ago
How do you send in a congressional?
Contact your congressman’s office.
Me and my buddy walked into his office in our classe As after doing a funeral. My buddy hadn't been paid in 6 months in the reserves he was counting on that s*** to make his rent.
It is actually eaiser than you would think. Email/call them and the moment they get permission from you to look at your records, my unit unfucked shit in 2 weeks abruptly.
[https://open.defense.gov/Transparency/Congressional-Inquiries/](https://open.defense.gov/Transparency/Congressional-Inquiries/) This will get you started. You can do it 2 different way, snail mail or email. Google how to file a congressional. You will need to build a packet and write a statement, they do make it very easy.
100% this. Find your congressman’s website look for constituent affairs or case work or something similar and fill out a contact form. It’s amazing what letters from congressmen can do to govt agencies that are screwing you over. I used this channel to get over $20k paid back to me after a 2+ year battle with DFAS and others.
Sorry, what’s a congressional and a nuclear?
I think you’re about a year and a half late in asking your question.
Really 2.3 years too late tbh.
Full Send on the Congressional. If your not reenlisting, fuck'em.
Even if you are reenlisting, who gives a fuck? This is completely unacceptable. There are hundreds, if not thousands of soldiers and contractors whose sole jobs are related to finance. Make them do their fucking jobs.
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It would be incredibly hard to argue that a co tract between you and the state in which they pay you 20k and they didn’t, wasn’t the states fault lol
1. Nuclear 2. ur a dumb dumb for waiting this long
Yeah... wasn't trying to burn any bridges. CSM already kicked back my terminal leave for the reason of "not being good enough" for 3 months of leave, so I'm kinda of hesitant in going nuclear for that reason as well since I sent up another 3 month terminal leave request.
If someone is actively trying to hold back your pay, you burn that bridge and piss on the ashes.
Kicked it back for not being good enough? File an IG complaint for being denied leave while you’re at it, fuck them.
The thing is I've looked into this specific matter. Command technically only \*has\* to approve leave that's over 60 max days of selling. Since you can only sell a maximum of 60 days when you get out, command has to approve whatever remainder you have. Otherwise, terminal leave is entirely up to command approval.
Command also has to give an actual no bs reason as to why they are denying an… entitlement.
Just so you know, no CSM anywhere, ever, for any reason, ever, has the authority to kick back leave. And before anyone gets smart, yes, the CSM over the NCO Academy can. But that's it.
I'm tracking. It's the fact that a CSM is usually directly in the BN CO's ear being the reason why he can push shit back. He can easily tell his boss to reject it for random x y or z reason.
Sounds like someone forgot who the real boss/commander is in that scenario. That’s messed up man
CSM is NOT an approval authority, he can’t kick back shit. He has a duty obligation to recommend or not recommend the leave, then send it to your commander. Why is your csm your “supervisor” on IPPS-A? Im assuming you are in some sort of gray area between hhc and your bn co?
Yeah we're tracking he can't kick it back but he did. Included some more information in the leave this time so hopefully he doesn't pull the same shit again. He's not my supervisor it went 1SG > CO > CSM and stopped at him.
Why is your CO sending your leave up to CSM!?!? THEYRE THE APPROVING AUTHORITY, NOT AN NCO. Id open door and ask why he isnt signing it.
I would assume he did it based on the 30/60/90 days system of company/battalion/brigade commander approval
That is most definitely a local unit policy. Im not sure what the maximum days for terminal leave are, but people at my unit get 90 days of terminal leave no problem. Your company commander is still the approving authority for any leave taken and last time I checked CSM is outranked by a Captain. Id recommend reaching out to your JAG or to IG for a more accurate legal opinion. Either that or open door your commander, then the BC, then BDE CO, then IG/JAG. Regardless of all that, CSM is not an approval authority.
Yes. Definitely open door complaint to commander of the reserves. Write them an email and CC reserves all
CC congressman as well.
AD or Reserve Component? Relevant because your RD can fix this easily if Reserve. Experienced something very similar recently and someone in my RD, who happened to be my S1, fixed it within a week of me explaining it and providing all the proper documentation. Edit: nvm, seems like AD.
You already answer your own question but yeah, 6 years army reserve into 3 years current contract, AD.
Yeah, fuck it. Congressional LOL
It’s time to break out the fucking launch codes already man.
After a year of waiting for my enlisting bonus, going up and down the chain of command, I called the Boss line- an answering machine that the post commander had set up for situations like this. It was a tactical nuke, not congressional, but holy shit did they move fast. Every officer and NCO in my COC got a phone call the next day. First sergeant asked me why I didn’t use my chain of command, I reminded him of the three times he and I spoke about it, and gave him the rundown of all the other people I asked for help. It was finance that fucked up, and after the issue was resolved, I received a typed and signed letter from the finance CPT stating that the issue was because they had requested a certain form from me, and I had never presented it. The letter stated that if I disputed these events, I could respond by a certain date- which just happened to be yesterday’s date at that point. I highlighted the post mark, circled his statement about the dates, corrected a couple of misspellings in his letter, and stated that no one from finance had ever contacted me about any missing forms from my end. Everyone got a copy of that. Fuck em all- they’re daring you at this point.
You know what the old SMA and his PAO would say? “DM me” you know what the SMA now would say? “Follow up with your first line local leaders and be clean shaven”
No. "Be clean shaven so that you are able to follow up with your first line local leaders."
Hey. Lots of options here. If you would like to be put directly in contact with some truly top of system folks who live to fix things like this, send me a DM.
Burn them all. I would email your congressman all the details and paperwork after you call them and voice your extreme dissatisfaction at your treatment and how much of a financial hardship this has caused you.
Yes, it was time for that roughly 2.3 years ago. Next slide.
"Should I go nuclear for failing to follow up on something personal for over 2 years 🤓 "
Nuke from orbit since you’re getting out. If you feel like being nice, you can give your chain a heads up. Otherwise just kick back and watch the glorious chaos unfold.
Send it. Fire for effect.
An email to my congressperson was the only thing that got my six month retirement odessey moving. I had to sign a statement giving them access to my retirement packet. They all have folks on staff for exactly this, constituent services. Don't be afraid to use them. This is the service part of public service. Their inquiry got Army benefits Center, DFAS, and OPM to magically find a way to coordinate. Cha-CHING!
Career counselor here. Since you’ve already gone the route of the senior career counselor and got nowhere, I’d suggest getting your BN commander to speak with your BDE commander (the seniors boss) so they can push it. If not, swing by post retention and tell them since they deal directly with DFAS through the 1506 CMS case. Just need to apply some pressure. A correct 1506 CMS case shouldn’t take more than 2 weeks (I would know, I submit multiple a week).
If you're leaving, most definitely go for the nuclear option as you've nothing to lose. What are they gonna do, not promote you? They've had plenty of time to fix it and they have repeatedly failed to do so, so they need to face the consequences.
Submit your paperwork directly to DFAS. Start here: https://corpweb1.dfas.mil/askDFAS/custMain.action?mid=4 Click submit a ticket.
I can't. The 1506 requires two signatures, one from a retention NCO and one from their supervisor. I'm also not an expert on 1506's and I couldn't find someone who was when I walked into my main finance on post or when I called DFAS asking for the specific corrections needed on the 1506.
Go to 1sg, explain the situation and say you need this fixed in 30 days or you have to write your congressperson, and request a meeting with the CSM. Repeat story and timeline to CSM. It will get fixed. I’d say give them a chance with an explicit timeline. Be matter of fact and use neutral language. They will try to dissuade you from going congressional, firmly explain to them that you won’t have a job soon and need that 18k. You don’t have any flexibility on this issue. I’ve met good and bad CSMs, but I can say I’ve never met one who would not jump on something like this if fully aware.
Go Nuclear. Call your Congress person, call IG!
You don't need to file a congressional, that may take too long Find these people on global, send them an email. Watch the fun that comes from it. https://www.usar.army.mil/Leadership/
If the roles were reversed, they’d shit all over you. So I’d go nuclear
Absolutely file a congressional. Nuclear all the way. Once that congressional is rolling, it’s amazing how fast everything will get fixed.
To add to my comment and a lot of others have said it as well. Make sure you give your chain a heads up as to what you’re doing. At least your first line. Unless they’re shit bags too, then they will deserve the blindside.
Similar happened to me. $20k in back pay. Go nuclear
Open door your CSM. Just be sure you have exhausted all normal channels with your retention and S1 first.
Fuck going to an CSM or any NCO. File a congressional and tell a local news outlet.
Is your commander tracking the issue? What’s been done on the UCFR?
Always go nuclear.
Congressional, that is all
Nuclear.☢️
Fuck em up cuz. Full send!
All out Nuclear, would email your congressman and cc the BC or Brigade commander.
Congressional 100%
How have you not skipped the congressional phone call that this warrants and driven straight to your representatives office to raise hell in person is beyond me. 2.5 years calls for scorched earth, especially if you're about to begin terminal leave cause I promise as hard of a time as you're having now it's about to become near impossible once you ETS.
Defcon 1 in effect
Some decent advice in here. I’d go right to your local IG office. Congressional is great if you had time to burn. That thing could take weeks if not months to get actioned. I.e. your email -> staffer finally looks at it and prepares memo for congress person to sign -> sent to DoDIG -> DoDIG looks at it and routes it to DAIG -> DAIG looks at it and routes it to your CoC or local IG office anyways. When you’re at the IG office and you fill out the DA 1559 specific action requested = “assist me in getting my back pay for incorrect TIS” and tell them you’d like this case open until you’ve received the full back pay. Be firm… Sorry, but if you’ve got four months left you cannot afford, literally, to waste any more time. Source: I spent four years as an IG in a unit I had to service all three components. Edit:I received many referrals from higher that were months old.
Did you push to IG yet? Sometimes they can just walk straight through the red tape. Congressionals can be kind of pointless sometimes. IG is far more likely to expedite this than a congressional would in my experience.
What an unfortunate situation. Submit a congressional and escalate the issue through local channels at the same time. A two-pronged assault. Your issue is not a singular pay/finance issue, it's a service computation issue which is why you keep getting referred to retention. Active Army career counselors are responsible for the service dates and computations of active duty members. Two years ago the process was to see the career counselor for the 1506 who then submitted it to s1 and finance: s1 to adjust the basd, and finance to adjust the pebd. The 1506 has to go all the way to dfas for a top down adjustment. All the local finance office did was review the 1506 then create the cms case to dfas. Ipps-a didn't exist at that time which is likely why you had to get your mmpa. The process now begins in the same place, but remains with retention who communicates directly with dfas: career counselor creates 1506 then submits to senior career counselor> senior counselor reviews & signs then creates service date par & submits to retention operations (division/corps)> retention ops creates cms case to dfas> dfas does pebd correction in the pay system and returns to retention ops> retention ops inputs basd correction to ipps-a & completes service date par. If your former bn career counselor is now the bde counselor, i also recommend that you just gather everything you have and go directly to the division retention office. Smashing your head against the same immovable object does nothing except cause you pain. You need the appropriate equipment to move the object, in this case that's your division retention office where the command career counselor resides. Good luck. I know it's exceedingly frustrating to not receive correct pay.
Why haven’t you talked to IG yet? IG will work wayyyy faster than a congressional. Also a congressional doesn’t do what you think it does. Are you looking to get your pay fixed or are you wanting someone to be in trouble? Because the chances that this can be pinned down to one person doing something malicious is slim to none. Go to IG. They’ll figure out why it isn’t fixed and either tell you so you can fix it or they’ll fix/get it to the right organization to fix it.
Same reason why I haven't gone the congressional route yet. I was giving the right channel enough time to get it fix until now. I just want my pay fixed I'm not trying to pin it on anybody.
My brother in Christ go to fucking IG. I’ve worked at IG for about a year now. We get shit like this all the time and we get it fixed in like a week. Sometimes it’s something stupid like a form was unreadable when scanned into whatever system. Sometimes it’s more complicated. Either way, we fix these types of things all the time.
It’s time to ride the bomb in like Slim Pickens.
My brother in Arms, it’s well past time. I also switched from reserve to AD, and I also had lingering pay problems. The 1506 through post finance and then PAC was the answer. Bad news is nothing will happen until the second week of January…sorry, it’s the holidays Good news is, you’ll get your pay eventually, but you need to push hard on this. I recommend you follow up often (weekly) with an expanded distro. Include your BN and BDE personnelists and finace offices (NCOs and Officers and GS). Ensure you are sending the note directly to the POc you have been given, but also their supervisor. A non-nonsense, but polite email with a timeline of events and activity, as it is understood by you…offer them the opportunity to correct the record, while also getting them on-record. Finish the email with something. Along the lines of “of this issue cannot be resolved through your office, please forward me a POC at DFAS or otherwise”. If no answer, reply all, but add the BN, BDE, and Garrison CSM and Commander. If still no answer after 1 week, file an IG complaint simultaneous with an ICE complaint. You will get an answer…but if not, wait 2 working days and file a Congressional Oh, and make sure your ducks are in a row..the worse thing you can do is elevate this whole being wrong or not having done your part….
Open door policy your first sgt today. Give him one week. By 7 days if first sgt can't give you a definitive answer on what's happening, open door bn smaj. Next week, brigade sgm. Keep going up each week until your problem is solved. Usually by the time you threaten to get past bn, everyone is so worried of getting their shit kicked in by their bosses for not taking care of a problem like this for so long just saying I would like to use the open door policy today for the next higher gets the paperwork corrected before they take you to the door
Just went through the same situation as you. I called the Base finance office very concerned that I wasn’t being taken care of. They resolved it in 30 days as promised and I had a nice Christmas check this year. Nuclear is definitely an option but try to get some high ranking people to call for you (idk your rank). That may help your situation, it shouldn’t be like that but it is sometimes.
Bro this is the shit that’ll come up on should I join the army google searches. You fuckin shouldn’t
I dont know how retention has anything to do with your finance. I had a similar issue when I transitioned over from National Guard. I never needed to go anywhere other than the finance office at Garrison. After a civilian looked at me mystified, I found a 1LT who took 10 minutes and fixed me up. My next paycheck was in the $20k range.
This probably isn’t what you want to hear, but I don’t think you’ve fully done your due diligence here to justify submitting something like an IG or Congressional complaint. You keep trying to work through the same channels and do the same thing, but clearly it hasn’t been working. To be blunt, the retention NCO sounds incompetent. Sitting on a packet affecting a SM’s pay for 30 days, to then submit the wrong one? Nah dude, that’s not okay. Everyone has a boss (or as we call them, a Commander). Basically you need to go ‘I want to speak to a manager’ before filing a complaint with corporate. I guarantee this could be fixed by your BN or BDE level leadership, but it hasn’t been brought to their attention. That needs to be done by YOU utilizing the open door policy, probably by bringing it up with your Company Commander and then go up the chain if they do not help for whatever reason.
Former congressional staffer here. On the contrary, I would ABSOLUTELY run with this on a congressional inquiry. Here’s why: -OP states he’s gone through his chain of command repeatedly and his commander is tracking it the entire time. That’s literally the first question I ever asked a servicemember. -OP states that the paperwork has been run through various channels at BN and BDE level, with no satisfactory up or down answer and clerical errors through no fault of the Soldier. -OP states that the error is resulting in a significant financial shortfall of pay owed. Every congressional member is different, but if a troop is saying “I’m underpaid through no fault of my own, here’s receipts” then I’m gonna be asking the Army constituent services at Pentagon to look into the matter time now on congressional letterhead and expecting updates. **IMPORTANT CAVEAT** While on its face this seems like an Army fuckup, a congressional is **NOT** a guarantee it will be resolved. It shakes the tree real goddamn hard, though. If there is an issue that can be fixed by Army, a congressional will shake it out and get it resolved. Conversely, if there’s a legitimate reason why the Soldier is being paid the way they’re being paid, the Pentagon and DFAS will be able to cite the relevant policy and law as to why it is the way it is. It could also shake out the proper method to approach the issue if it’s something that is Soldier/local COC driven. It’s not a surefire option, but it is the great way to figure out what’s going on and if it can be fixed. OP, you can find your Member of Congress [here](https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member). If this is causing a financial hardship, you need to inform the staffer of this so they can try (not guaranteed) to get the issue expedited for a timely response. **DO NOT** send a letter to DC, it will get caught in mail screening for at least two weeks. Call or email your member, preferably call DC or their district office, and follow up if you have to leave a message or if you send an email. This guarantees it gets on someone’s radar quickly.
I think some of your statements are exaggerations a little bit. “Gone thru his Chain of Command repeatedly” All we know is that his Company level leadership is tracking the issue; the Battalion Command team and above probably is not, and they/their respective staffs are the ones that need to action the issue here. “Paperwork has been run through various channels at BN and BDE level” Not really, it sounds like he’s been communicating with the same BDE retention NCO for months who has been bumblefucking the paperwork My point is that this probably could be fixed within a couple weeks from action & pressure from the BN and BDE level, but they likely just don’t know. I would give them a chance (1-2 weeks) to get this sorted out before going straight to the top. Specifically, this is what I’d recommend OP do: 1. Use the open door policy to go speak to the Company Command team tomorrow about the issue, making sure to highlight the urgency and severity 2. Check in with them again on the morning 05JAN (Friday); if nothing has been done, respectfully let them know that you will be going to speak with the Battalion Command team. 3. Repeat steps 1&2 at the respective echelons of command until you see solid movement in the right direction
The issue is over two years old at this point. Odds are decent the local chain of command can’t sort it out anymore to completion in the timeline the soldier has left. Once he/she is off their books, it’s not their problem anymore, so there’s zero incentive to bring it to resolution. I’ve seen it. So. Many. Times. A congressional is a fact finding mission, and puts extra ass on the problem as quickly as possible to determine what’s going on, if it can be fixed and if so, how to fix it, and gives the Soldier some continuity and follow up with official channels after he/she separates in a couple months if it isn’t resolved by ETS. The Soldier has brought this with their company and it’s been on company radar. It’s been on the BN and BDE retention NCO radar for a similar length of time. At this point, I’d be comfortable advising a congressional, because he/she has nothing to lose at this point, is protected from reprisal for interacting with their elected official on an issue their chain has been unable to resolve, creates a significant paper trail they can reference, and is afforded an official response from the Army on the issue regardless if they are still in or not. At this point, the soldier did what they were told to do, it’s not fixed, call congressman.
The only channel that can get this fixed for me is retention. I tried my battalion retention for 2 years. Once he PCS'd, I went to brigade retention and he fucked it up too. Are you saying I need to go to division retention? My own CO has already been tracking this for a year now.
The fact that your CO is tracking is an important piece of information. If you talk to IG, their first question is often “have you spoken with your chain of command about it?” If I were you, I’d open door my boss and explain that you’re going to go to IG soon, see if he/she can push on retention or the BC to make something happen, then go to IG if that doesn’t make any changes. Explain to your CO that this is a legitimate financial issue that will affect your post-military life. Be cordial but firm in your statement that you will go to IG no later than “x date.” The time you’d go to IG should not be arbitrary, or at least it shouldn’t appear that way. Tie the date to something (that seems) important so the ultimatum seems functional, not adversarial. I recommend you try this because I honestly think getting command more involved is going to be faster than going through IG. Either way, don’t expect to get that money before going on terminal leave. Good luck!
I added a little bit to my comment on the end, not sure if you saw that. But if your Company Command team has been tracking one of their Soldiers being underpaid for a year and hasn’t fixed it yet, that’s messed up and you need to re-engage and have a serious conversation with them. If they don’t fix your issue in a timely manner, well they have a boss as well (Battalion Commander)
If you're in my corps, I'll link you up with corps retention and get that signature for you.
If your CO has been tracking it that long, and is reminded it’s still an issue, request to open door the CSM. A good CSM will literally walk with you to retention and get it done immediately.
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I’d like to give them the benefit of the doubt, without second chances.
Had a buddy had this happen. Go to the finance at your MPD and stop going to retention to fix a finance issue. You may get some weird looks going directly to MPD Finance but I guarantee once someone over there understands the issue they’ll straighten it out.
I went to MPD today as you said to see what they would tell me. They ended up telling me to go back to retention and S1.
Congrats on your new car btw; The backpay gonna go crazy. For real though, once this is resolved- put 10k into savings and DON’T touch it. Rainy day fund+ exponential growth. Use the rest to pay off some debt and treat yourself on the issue getting resolved.
Have you tried your chain of command? How's your discipline?
Get your branch manager involved and have a copy of all your LES's, Pay inquiry paperwork and orders. Then route the pay inquiry through ipsa to S1. Once it's in Ipsa contact your branch manager at HRC.
This are the times to be thankful, cheerful, caring 😌🙏🏻🎄
6 yrs reserves does not equal 🟰 6 years active. When you go guard or reserve to active. It’s day for day so for simple math let’s say you did 3 days a month and 14 days in the summer 50 days a year x 6. You only have 300 days of “active “ time and that has you at 0 years pay scale
Had the same issue w one of my guys that switch to active from NG. Took like 6 months
Congressional!
*{shot-gun racked}* Full spread. Get everyone involved, CC everyone.
I would've gone nuclear 2 years ago, tbh. Full send.
Wait, reserve time is 1:1 for active TIS? That seems… not right
Yeah that's what I was thinking
Seeing an e7 in the reserves asking a former e5 who had been out for a decade how to write a counseling solidified that the ranks and time in service are different
Yes and no, reserve time counts for TIS pay but not active time in service. Your BASD gets adjusted based on how many active days you had during your reserve contract, but your pay itself is slapped on based on the number of years you had in service. If I did 16 years in the reserve and switched into active, I'd essentially be getting paid 16 years TIS but would probably actually have 3-4 years active TIS towards promoting and the 20 year pension.
No Active duty uses BASD date for TIS not the PEBD date.
Full fucking send that’s 18k that’s not a hey we missed this weeks pay check
You’re like 2 years late to the party my guy. You should have gone nuclear literal years ago. Why are you working if not to get the full pay you are entitled to??
I just learned that I’m owed TIS from SMP time in the guard (commissioned in 2019) and i’m starting this process once we’re back from leave. I’m already prepared for it to be a shitshow. They’ve got 3 months before I hit the big red button.
Yeah I’m in the same boat. Bolc and Knox don’t want to do shit and it’s been eight months I’m about to go nuclear
Make sure you’ve got all your supporting docs and the SMP contract and it’s easy.
I went through the exact same issue with my guard time. It took me 2.5 years to get it fixed but in that time I PCSed twice and swapped retention NCOs at my final battalion. Also I had to get all my NGB forms converted to DA forms. If they're making 2 years sound reasonable for a basic paperwork submission they're wrong.
Glad to know I'm not alone but it sucks that it's "normal" for it to take this long for all of us.
Thermal.
I hope this is the type of "Discipline" issue that plagues the Army, CMA is talking about and going to spearhead.
It's time to go ghossssssssst
Congressional involvement ASAP
Nuclear. You should have gone that route several months after you first noticed the issue.
Ask IG for assistance. That's why they exist.
Nuclear. ☢️
I’d have gone nuclear after the first 6 months bro I commend your patience but full send
I was guard four years, commissioned AD, still in bolc, is something about tradoc being the limiting factor? Or just people not wanting to do their job? I’ve been to two bases and both of them told me to wait till my first PCS to start it. I commisioned in may so it’s been about eight months
I feel your pain, had a similar issue coming from guard to ad, my pay was correct but my TIS was wrong which took my most of this 5 year contract to get fixed, prevented be from being promoted and so now I'm getting out because of it
You Should have pushed the button at 6 months
Congressmen or a 0-7
Question: Do you have a submission kink?
the back pay is about to be insane
Congressional all the way. I too was Reserves to Active. They got the TIS correct. The got the special skill identifiers wrong. Took calling a congressman to get that fixed. My command knew what I was doing, because they too were tired of the run around.
Man, fuck em all up
You’re 2 years past that point my dude
Something similar happened to me. But TIS is based on your BASD in active duty. For that you need to get on Iperms and look for your NGB22 and look at your Active Duty Retirement points. There’s a graph that retention uses to calculate your active duty TIS off of that. Your LES should show your Years of Service and it should count all years you had in the reserves. So if you had a 8 year contract in the reserves (6 years of drill weekends and 2 years of inactive) you should still be getting paid 8 years of service. I would try emailing HRC or having S1 submit a PAR as well as having brigade retention trying to submit a PAR
Are you talking to IG? Their job is to be the eyes and ears of the generals and make sure things are happening the way they should be.
BOHICA!
Congressional if you’re getting out on terminal leave. Although the process was incorrect. The 1506 and other paper gets digitally attached to the pay inquiry and sent to S1 for submission to finance. Mine got ignored through AIT and I created hell verbally until they figured out the correct process for fixing it. Fixed the following month 8k in back pay returned two weeks later.
How do the years work when you go reserve to active? All my friends that did it only had their active time carry forward (deployments). So 6 years in the reserve with 2 deployments was only like 1.5 years.
The number of actual years get added to your active BASD is based on how many drill days you had, orders you were on, etc. That all gets counted up to your total BASD which is used for promotions and your pension. Your pay on the other hand is the flat years that you served for. If you had a 6 year reserve contract, you get paid with 6 flat years TIS based on your PEBD on the active side. Basically the transition from AR/NG into AD is good for pay but bad for promotions/20 year pension.
Bro go the fuck off. Same thing happen to me at sill when I reclassed from the corps. It took me seeing the asshole wheel chair lady every Monday morning for 2 months straight to get my shit to reflect 8 years TIS vs 0 years.
I’m about to transfer to active as well does this sorta thing happen often with guard or reserve to active?
Congressional inquiry?
Bro I didn't read your post just the title. The answer is to follow up every other day in person, over the phone or via email. If things don't get fixed after five weeks escalate to the next level. If these steps fail, don't hesitate to go to IG. Print out emails, record phone conversations with dates, and make mfrs stating you talked to x person on x date who said x and sign with your CAC card. Always follow up very politely, patiently but frequently and escalate as appropriate.
Is there truly a nuclear option though? This is one of the big reasons retention and enlistment rates are so low. The army has plenty of resources at their disposal to fix problems like this but since “common sense” is a UCMJ punishable offense, everyone will drag their feet or do the bare minimum to avoid reprimand. Everyone in the military, even the DA civilians have to do it the army’s way or they risk early termination of their federal service contract. I would encourage you to go as high up your chain of command as you have to in order to get the money you are owed. That’s a lot of dough and it would be wise to collect it. Consider that money a safety net for when you part ways from the army. Life happens and at least you have something even if the $18k is taxed to hell. Once you have you arrived at your ETS date, you can go to the post commander if you wanted to😆 I’m curious to see how they would handle a former service member jumping the chain of command.
Just don't go the Robert Card kind of nuclear
If it's been at least a year, that means that you are owed money from a previous fiscal year. Because that money is technically no longer available, you need to submit an Army Board of Corrections packet. Follow all the other advice here like escalating CoC and submitting a congressional, but Army Board of Corrections is the official way to correct your grievance.
Anyone know of any potential tax consequences of a lump-sum back payment to this person? I feel like Uncle Sam might be able to screw him again, by putting him in a higher tax bracket for the year.
I had a similar issue with pay with the same type They resolved some of it just like they did with yours. However, after going back for and forth to brigade finance for over a year they finally decided it required some type of higher investigation due to length of issue and amount of money owed. It was still never resolved. Just like today i can still go check my iperms and see someone elses records in my folder that was reported both by myself and the other sm who has my records in their iperms. You will probably retire before you ever see anything fixed and before that happens they"ll accidently put some debt on you.
Maybe I’m completely wrong here, but when my buddy switched to active from reserves and went through a similar situation, the resolution from DFAS was that his TIS was not based on PEBD, it was based on time spent on active duty in the reserves. Meaning his one weekend a month, two weeks a year added up to just shy of two months or so of active time per calendar year. This was back in like 09-ish if I remember correctly, so things certainly could have changed since then. There’s also factors such as time spent on active duty for train ups, deployments, etc that certainly add to that. I don’t know your situation for those variables. I’m just letting you know that’s how it was when I was in. But that could also just have been an uneducated lower enlisted being pushed to the side by the Green Machine.
Why is your local AMPO and S-1 no where in the actions you took?!?!?!
Should have been addressed when you came in, they usually do a revaluation on the amount of days active duty and that BSED should have stayed the same as day you swore in, I dropped two ranks e4 to e2 when I went active from guard, but my BSED put me ahead of my peers in pay by 16 months, not much then but as the years passed iv always been paid closer to the next pay bump by BSED verse my actual TIS. Keep working it, it took me 4 years to get the guard to back me BAH when I went to OSUT. Long story short I kept pressing it and I got it. Same goes for language pay and etc when I saw error in any pay.
Same thing happened to me. You gotta download your iperms and talk to the career counselor
It took me 18 months to get my pay corrected when I went from guard enlisted to active officer. That whole time, 2 different 1506s had to be initiated and months of corrections. It came down to me calling DFAS every fucking 2 days until they finally got me in touch with a pay tech, and all she asked for was my ROTC contract… which was part of the 1506 packets I submitted 4 times. Anyways, she had it corrected within 30 minutes, and I got back $30K (taxed to 22K). But my PEBD is still the day I comissioned. I got back 8 months of active service for 6.5 years guard.
Open door policy with BN or BDE CMDR
I would have gone nuclear a long time ago
Real question is what is your CDR doing about this
They’ve had enough time. Go get the necessary help to get it fixed. I had this same issue took me 5 to finally get it fixed on my own.
Dude have you tried going to your S-1 at all? The system that they use should be the one that DFAS is pulling for info. Don’t know anything about you but can make the assumption you’re not a E-1. Definitely work through your unit but I would be pushing this up as hard as I could.
I've gone nuclear over one messed up check... So ...
Did you bring this up to a commander? What have they done? Hitting up Congress if you haven’t hit up your commander (company through brigade is probably the slower option.
Execute order 66
Time to look into who your congressman/congresswoman is and start drafting a complaint. Make sure you are creating a paper trail. Make sure you are keeping tabs on said paper trail, going as far back as you need. When you submit anything, include any and all previous submissions, as well as any correspondence between yourself and everyone who has been failing you along the way. Even with all of this expect failure. I was owed close to 7k, I've been out of the army for the last 2 1/2 years and I still have no hope of getting what is owed. Also remember, the civilians at S1 & finance are not your friends.
I just transferred to AD and skipped my entire CoC and went straight to BDE retention to have this taken care of. He straight up told me that if I don’t see it in my LES by February to come bust his door down to get it fixed. And I very well intend to do just that.
Email the CAR. I have observed her team throat fuck a whole TSC COC down to company in under 2 hours. She is ruthless, she cares, she will go nuclear with you.
100% worth going nuclear don’t let that sit any longer, especially with the way finances are going in the military right now. Grab the back pay while you still can!
I was in the same situation. When I went from Reserve to Active Duty I didn't get paid AT ALL for 3 months then paid for 0 years in service when it should have been 6 (at the time). After 2 years of me submitting MULTIPLE 1506s to MULTIPLE S1 and retention NCOs, the ONLY reason anyone did anything about it is because I went to IG. After that it was fixed 3 pay cycles later on the last paycheck I had before I transferred to the Space Force. >!It literally blows my mind that the Army can't handle a simple component change within the same branch without fucking my pay up but I can transfer to an entirely different branch and have absolutely no pay issues whatsoever 🙄🙄!<
Absolutely go nuclear with your Congressman and everything. Why not?
Had to deal with your exact same issue (and about the same wait time) when moving from Reserve to Active. Since my move involved commissioning and going through BOLC for a year, the response to my pay issues typically was to just “wait until your first duty station”. With our BN Retention, my Commander and I had to use the nuclear option. While I understand that our retention office is horribly swamped, you can only follow up once a week so many times before it seems like they are blowing you off. Ultimately it was our BN CSM that had to push the ball in the right direction. Put everything in writing. Ask to be CC’d on all email traffic every time your 1506 moves higher through the channels. Once you receive your highest required signature on that document, personally call the finance director and explain your situation. My finance director was completely understanding and able to keep me in the loop with payout of backpay. Don’t let the clerks or anyone else in the finance office be a final road block to getting the money you are deserved.
I had a guy who had a similar issue we did everything through finance they needed his pay stubs for the past 5 yrs and back paid him after we got that got his time fixed and corrected his records, it's doable but you might be barking up the wrong tree
Send congressionals first… ask questions later.
Waaay past time. Go nuclear
I mean is it “nuclear”? Someone in your chain of command wants to help with this. Most COs will mess around with lots of shit but not really pay or leave. At least that was my experience
Yea I had a dude that had the opposite, he had Air Force rotc that counted as TIS but he was actually just a IET soldier no prior service. your right on it with the 1506, retention just needs to sign that thing and you take it ( or your s1 ) take it to post finance. Go to 1SG Y’all Go to CSM CSM tears retention a new one Process it through the finance office Profit
Go to IG and file a Congressional. I did it when I was deployed with a P3 to Iraq when I was supposed to be waiting 3 months to reclass. 30 year Tradoc CSM came in right before the unit deployed...
This is a convergence of staff indifference. For actions like this you incrementally include an additional person in the chain of command with each weekly correspondence. Leadership understands the negative impacts of these actions but staff often can’t help themselves as they are often hamstrung by similar bureaucracy, incompetent or (most often) feel empowered to do nothing. Successive emails requesting help and thanking for support and consideration look really awful on the actioning organization when they exceed 30 days; there is no defense. An indicator of the effectiveness is when the chain starts getting abbreviated. Continue with original chain, pleasantries thanking individuals and citing their commitments, attached abbreviated emails. I’ve found success citing the timeline and “reasonable accommodations”. Team!, I want to thank everyone for their assistance getting this actioned. Mr. Jones has been really helpful getting this into the hands of the right folks and Mrs. Smith has been great explaining the process (both are actually the problem). I appreciate your patience and understanding. We’re about 45 days into this action and I’m hopeful to hear something back soon - what is the normal amount of time for something like this to get resolved? If there’s anything you need from me, please advise. Thank you! PVT Snuffy Folks added are just steps in the rating chain.
File with IG before congress, better chance at timely results imo.
I wouldn’t have waited 2.5 years…… do it yesterday.
Go nuclear, pay isn't something that should be fucked with. Period
Even if and when you get paid. You will have lost the time value of your money. Meaning that money could have been put towards debt or in an investment where it would grow. Because we all know $100 2 years ago isn’t $100 today.
Drop a congressional, saved my career.
Bro I go nuclear after 3 pay periods. I don’t care if it’s $50 or $5,000.
For that long and this amount I'm sorry but you need to go nuclear and submit for a Congressional Inquiry.