The Coast Guard’s seven-member Permanent Change of Station (PCS) Assist Team will wrap up on Sept. 30.
If you are carrying out PCS moves after the standard PCS season, you should work with your servicing Personnel and Administration (P&A) shop, regional transportation offices, and your command for any assistance.
The PCS Assist Team, the advocacy group supporting the Service’s most complex moves, engaged on behalf of individual members and families with U.S. Transportation Command (TRANSCOM), Joint Personal Property Shipping Offices (JPPSO), Coast Guard Transportation and Policy Office, Coast Guard Legal Services Command, and private industry transportation service providers (TSP). The team regularly communicated evolving household goods policies, entitlement updates and policy determinations.
Through a helpline, the PCS Assist Team supported members and their family traveling within the continental United States as well as from Europe, Guam, Southwest Asia, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Alaska. The team tailored innovative responses to more than 1,100 requests for assistance for members whose moves were impacted by changing transit requirements and contracted mover related challenges. Often as the single remaining source of recourse for the member, the PCS Assist Team coordinated solutions to the most complex special inquiries, most often relating to the enforcement of contractual requirements with personally procured moves (PPMs).
Specific success stories
The PCS Assist Team was very productive at aggressively encouraging transportation service providers (TSP) to stick with the contractual requirements. This came in handy when two chief petty officers, one moving from Ohio to New York, the other from Texas to South Carolina, had delayed delivery dates well past their stated required delivery date (RDD). Neither member had success with the TSP in expediting delivery. Both members then called to the PCS Assist Team. The PCS Assist Team reached out to supervisory contacts at the TSP and demanded answers, specifically applying pressure by pointing out the financial consequence of an inconvenience claim against them due to the delay well past the RDD. In both cases, the moving companies relented and moved the delivery dates to left on the calendar, with newly scheduled deliveries more than three weeks earlier than the members were able to negotiate directly.
The PCS Assist Team provided expedited service when members were in a time crunch. A member transferring from South Carolina to Puerto Rico arrived at the Vehicle Processing Center (VPC) near Cape Canaveral, Florida, for his personally owned vehicle (POV) shipment appointment. The VPC denied the shipment due to a discrepancy in the accounting line on the member’s orders. Member frantically called the PCS Assist Team requesting emergency intervention. The vehicle shipment was the last step of the household goods departure process, as he had a flight to Puerto Rico schedule for 3 hours after POV drop-off. This was exceptionally time sensitive. The PCS Assist Team was able to get a re-racked appointment with the VPC, delaying the shipment of the POV by 45 minutes. The Team then made positive contact with the local personnel and administrative (P&A) shop with specific amendment needs, notably the POV shipment funding code discrepancy and necessary correction as communicated by the VPC. The P&A shop immediately issued an amendment directly to the member’s civilian email and the VPC, correcting the orders discrepancy and allowing for shipment of the POV in time for the member and family to catch their flight.
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