Somewhere on the fringe of your memory, you may recall a post I made about the utter failure of the Department of Veteran Affairs to competently roll out the Post-9/11 GI BIll. My story is not unique in any way. My story is shared by, literally, hundreds of thousands of veterans of our ongoing armed conflicts. Veterans who promised something to their country, and upheld that promise. A promise, in the form of the Post-9/11 GI Bill (Ch33 hereafter), was made to us and has not been honored to a degree anyone could consider acceptable.
Four months. That is how long it took the VA to figure out I was eligible for Ch33. Keep in mind I had already been in the VA’s system for education benefits for a year under the Montgomery GI Bill, and am also in the VA’s system for disability and compensation. The requirements for Ch33 eligibility are simply not that hard to vet, especially not for veterans of an active-duty component. Did the veteran have 36 or more months of continuous active-duty service after September 11, 2001, and receive an honorable discharge? One sheet of paper contains all of this information, and the VA has this sheet of paper with my name on it in at least triplicate. Even the laziest of unskilled work could make it through literally thousands of these claims in a single day if motivated by a bacon double-cheeseburger. I will stop trying to understand how the VA failed to do this, because it defies all logic and I’m not sure even Socrates could come up with an explanation.
Roughly two more months have passed, and my Fall 2009 claim is still incomplete. When the VA found someone able to muster the will to read my DD214 and determine that my honorable discharge after 4 years, 11 months, and 26 days of continuous active-duty service did in fact mean I was eligible for Ch33, they fumbled the ball again. The University of Houston submitted my tuition and fees to the VA correctly, the VA turned around and certified me for a full $1000 less than I was owed. Immediately, I contacted the VA and informed them of their mistake. As far as they were concerned, it must have been my mistake. I got the school to call, and explain exactly what the mistake was and the VA agreed with them. “We will get this fixed,” they said. My account summary at UH still shows a $1000 debt owed. I have already taken half of my finals, and registered for Spring 2010 courses.
If you think that is pitiful, hold on to your chair, it gets worse. Remember the $3000 emergency advance payment the VA so graciously offered when they had veterans dropping out of college, because of the mountains of debt they built up, because the VA failed to deliver BAH payments as promised? I took one of these checks and was informed shortly thereafter the debt would be settled by withholding BAH payments when my claim was finally processed. When I finally got my money in early November, there was $3000 too much money. In early December, I got a full BAH payment for the month of November. The VA still isn’t withholding the money. That’s great, right? Free money! All my problems are, surely, gone! Wrong. Even if the overpayment is entirely the fault of the VA, you will pay it back. This has happened to me before. I have no desire to deal with the same sort of insanity again; I put away $3000 somewhere I wouldn’t touch it until either the VA withholds from my future BAH payments, or sends me a another debt-collection notice. Fool me once…
A contact within the Department of Veteran Affairs got me this response to an inquiry about settling the debt from the GI Bill head-honcho Keith Wilson:
“VA is currently developing the process to collect the amount of advance payments received. When the process is developed, VA will provide notification to all students that received an advance payment to ensure they understand the process and their questions are answered.”
If anyone else feels like that is the non-answer of the century, I am glad I have company. Why call veterans, and explain to them that the debt would be settled by withholding from BAH payments if that was not actually the plan?
As the semester draws to an end, I cannot say I look forward to Spring 2010. Allegedly, claims have yet to begin processing for the new semester and that is just another disaster waiting to happen. Ch33 was meant to afford veterans of our most recent wars the ability to go to school and focus only on school. We would not need to work, because we would get a housing allowance. We would not need to worry about how many hours we were taking, because our tuition and fees would be covered. Instead, we were not paid either on time. Instead, fighting to get what we were owed before we had to drop out, or risk drowning in a pool of debt, became a full-time job that robbed us of many hours that could have been spent studying.
This has been said many times, but is worth repeating again. Failing to plan, is planning to fail. The VA failed to plan, and failed us all.
For more information on the Post-9/11 GI Bill, and some of the ways you can fight back against the VA when they fail to do their jobs, go visit newgibill.org.
Update:
Finals are over, my grades have been posted, and the VA has still not paid for their $1000 mistake in my fees. I have tried to call, every single day, for several days and still cannot get anyone on the phone at the VA. This is absolutely maddening. I shudder to think of how the veterans even less fortunate than myself are taking things, especially this close to Christmas.
People ask me what I want for Christmas. Now I know. Give me a competently run GI Bill, and an effective Department of Veteran Affairs. That is all I want, and it will last me a lifetime.
Update #2:
Christmas has come and gone, and I had a good one. What I did not have, however, was resolution of my ongoing issues with the VA. In fact, things have become even more interesting.
The VA apparently uses Twitter now. Personally, I think they might want to master the technology they already use before they branch out too far into social media. Below is what the VA sent me regarding one of my tweets about underpayment of fees.
From @VAVetBenefits: @anthonymartinez Check w/ your certifying official to see what amounts your school submitted to VA for payment as that is what we pay.
Is that so? I have two documents, which I have scanned (with my personal information redacted) and uploaded here, proving otherwise. In addition to those documents, the VA’s own question system has an open and unresolved entry under my account about the underpayment of my fees started by a VA employee. Since a picture is worth 1000 words, and I have already exceeded 1000 words in this post, look below (click the photo for a larger view). I got lazy with my redaction of personal information, but note the areas highlighted by neon-green arrows.
VA Fail
Update #3 – Resolved
From @VAVetBenefits: @anthonymartinez Resolved. Thanks for the info and good luck!
This tweet appeared on my TweetDeck on December 30, 2009. Last night, on my way to my younger brother’s wedding, I got mail from the VA office in Muskogee dated December 29, 2009, that acknowledged the underpayment and informed me they had sent the appropriate $1000 payment to my university.
Big thanks to @DeptVetAffairs and @VAVetBenefits on Twitter for working hard to get my issue resolved. Without them, I’m not sure I’d have ever been paid. Another thanks goes out to Paul Rieckhoff of Iraq and Afganistan Veterans of America for his retweets of my updates here on the blog and the work his organization does to help other veterans in positions even worse than my own.
Were you able to contact someone at VA? I’ve been trying the education number and haven’t been able to connect. I took the advance payment in October but haven’t received any word about my claim.
Attempts to contact the VA myself always result in the “unprecedented call volume…. please try again later” message. Every. Single. Time. They still owe my school $1000 for their underpayment of my fees. I do not believe the issue will be resolved before the start of the Spring 2010 semester.
I just wanted to piggyback on the advance payment frustration. I’m in the same situation were I received an advance payment and still have yet to have the money recouped. I found a phone number on the VA website via link entitled “If You Owe the VA Money”, gave them a call and before I gave any of my information (name, SSN, etc) I was told verbatim “I don’t know how much you owe or when they are going to have to pay it back if you if you haven’t been billed” and then was given a phone number to call that works Monday – Wednesday. Of course I am sitting on this money and waiting for the VA to catch up with me and I am just PRAYING that when my classes start next month my payments will follow. The Post 9/11 GI Bill is a large reason why I COULD separate from the military and it’s in the toilet although I can’t say I wasn’t expecting or surprised by this. Definitely appreciate the info about the VA at least acknowledging they haven’t recouped any of the advance payments sent out, I can seem to find any info any were else. Just glad to see Operation Charlie Foxtrot is in full swing at the VA as usual.
Calling it a Charlie Foxtrot really is being too kind. Far too kind. The new year is rapidly approaching, I cannot (unsurprisingly) get anyone on the phone, and I am still sitting in a $1000 hole with my fees from last semester. The matter of overpayment is not something I am happy about either. No real idea what I am going to do about all of that.
The wheels, slowly they grind.
Thanks for beta testing. Hopefully they’ll have it and yellow ribbon sorted out by the time I ETS.
The only way that these types of broken promises will end is through Soldiers starting to plead their cases to the undereducated and impoverished youth currently being recruited into the U.S. military. As long as the pro-military voice is so deafening and unquestioned in America, the brass has no need to fulfill promises to grunts. Those grunts will soon be replaced with new grunts who are completely unaware of the pitfalls and deceit. When it comes to fixing broken systems- if it doesn’t hurt recruiting, its not a problem to the Pentagon.
Given the alternative of a near-certain trip to prison, I’m not sure it is such a bad deal for the under-educated, or impoverished, to join the service. Many of them never get out, and there is nothing wrong with that. Many of them leave far better citizens than they were before they went in, also not a bad thing if you ask me. The vast majority of our citizenry is woefully derelict in its duties as citizens. A deafening and unquestioned pro-military voice? You have absolutely got to be joking, the anti-military voice in this country is quite loud. I have no problem with either voice; I did, after all, swear to defend the Constitution.
If you are saying education needs to be fixed in America, I can hardly disagree. If you are saying our military ought to be used as outlined in the document I referenced earlier, I am again in complete agreement.
To state that the grunts are completely unaware of the pitfalls is just plain false. Everyone knows that recruiters are full of fecal matter. Everyone. You become more aware of the falsities just sitting in a MEPS. If you follow through, and sign the dotted line, you know what you are getting in to. If you make it out honorably, you know what to expect. None of this means you have to tolerate it, stay quiet, and enjoy the shafting Uncle Sam gives you. My blog is evidence enough of this. Remember, the brass is accountable to Congress and they are accountable to the people. If it is not a problem to the Pentagon, it is because of the failures of our citizens.
My hubby applied for the new gi bill in aug and the only payment we’ve received is the emergency payment.he constantly calls and they keep giving him the run around,like one week the moneys gonna be deposited (yes they gave a specific date!) and then the next day (really,he called the next day!!) they have no idea why someone would have told him that because now there’s a error with his paper work that has to be corrected manually.their screwing us over and no one seems to know how to what the hell their talking about.we had no xmas and are bills are mounting,so much for serving your country huh..
That is absolutely unacceptable. Contact your district representative, and file an official congressional inquiry. Your congressperson will have an office that deals with veteran issues, and these people are generally quite committed to getting us veterans what we are owed. If you have not yet contacted their office, do it as soon as you possibly can. There may be resolution in my case, at least with regards to the $1000 underpayment for fees, but it took fighting tooth and nail to get it. Do not give up, and do not let up.
The VA just direct deposited me a large sum of money. I would say somewhere around what I would expect for a full semester going full time. I took the advance payment in October and was informed that I would still receive December housing allowance and my tuition would be paid. My school still hasnt been paid tuition and the direct deposit I got at the end of December is way more than 1 housing allowance. I figure I’ll just sit on it and try to contact the VA which many of you know is useless. What amazes me is that their telephone lines are not even set up to where you can even stay on hold, and your call be answered in the place it was recieved. They actually hang up on you. I found this amazing. I mean really? It makes me think it’s a scam or something. I mean has anyone ever got a hold of anybody using the Gi Bill eductaion number?
Best of luck to everyone who is suffering from this, be careful what you spend that the VA gives you. I find it very hard to trust anything they give you without some verbal conformation.
Yeah, they’ll definitely take back overpayments. They just don’t know how they’re going to do it yet. My school payments showed up about 11 days after the BAH hit my account. One time I actually did get ahold of someone w/ the GI Bill number. Only once though.
I am in the same boat.the va gave me 70% when I am entitled to 80%.After 5 months the VA finally corrected this problem.But check this out instead of the sending the the school the 10% difference they sent the school another payment at 80%.They also sent me another book stipend at 80%.After arguing with the school and the VA and he school about who was at fault the school decided that they were going to mail the money back to the VA.Im like SERIOUSLY who uses the mail system .Im like cant you do it electronically.So to make a lond story short I am 900+ in debt according to the va and I cant get my December or January BAH until they get this money back from the school.OH and I forgot to add that the VA has yet to pay me the back BAH that I am owed.The still owe me the 10% difference.They are saying that it could take up to6-8 weeks to fix this.It has already been almost a month.I made an inquiry to the va but I have yet to hear back I called they VA and they said that it takes 4-6weeks to ger a response.
Oh I forgot to add that the VA sent me a letter stating that they took away 500+ dollars in debt away but I still owe 2500 dollars.Im like Oh hell no!! I couldnt wait until monday to call and find out what was going on.Well apparently the VA created a new accout for me which made it seem like my tution and BAH that they sent me at 70% was a debt.But they failed to tell me this.The Customer service rep said that they sent the letter out by mistake so now I have to set and wait I honestly dont think that I will get my money until February or March.No one at the VA can tell me how long its going to take to process it