We all end up conducting a military move, at one point or the other, in our time in the Army. I’m sure you’ve all heard good and bad things about PCS moves, this post isn’t meant to be a complaining session, rather one to provide some insight if your move doesn’t go the way you planned. This post will mainly focus about claims for damages and losses.

If you haven’t guessed by now, my most recent move was not a great one. I’ve conducted a total of four moves so far, the other three were not too bad, so I’m not trying to complain about the system. As you now, Move.mil is the primary website for setting up your PCS move and then filing any claims once it is complete. Also, when you are clearing your installation, you normally stop by the transportation office who will help verify your information in move.mil and help complete any confusing or special case items you may have.

My upfront advice is to (1) uphold your standard when moving,  (2)stay organized, (3)don’t get lazy in the end, and (4) remember the big picture.

(1) Uphold your standard. The PCS move is kind of like packing for a deployment or a change of leadership inventory. If you don’t make the movers put everything on the inventory list, they won’t. This can be a burden, especially if you are alone. My spouse had to supervise the packing of our last PCS, and it can be a challenge with all the chaos. There were multiple instances where the packers tried to sneak things out of the house under the guise of wrapping it in moving blankets on the truck. Do not allow this. They will take advantage of you. There was a point where the mover supervisor threatened to call the military movement office on my spouse, I’d implore you to let this happen. Had I been there or had real time knowledge of what the movers were doing, I would have demanded the movement office come out. The way I see it, our moves are not ones done out of leisure. Strapping a horse saddle to another mover and riding them around is not the level of care I would consider appropriate when moving a service member’s belongings. We are ordered to move and the least these companies can do is respect our belongings.

(2) Stay organized. Keep ALL the paperwork the movers give you. All of it. You will need it at multiple points of the claims process. Keep receipts for all high dollar items (furniture, TVs, electronics, etc.), digitally scan everything so you’re prepared. As you begin looking at things, develop a system to get all the information the claims process requires. You can reference the spreadsheet I attached. There are two tabs, reference the “completed” tab to see what you will need for filing claims in DPS (the system from Move.mil) and the “inprogress” tab for the PCLAIMS system the Army uses (more on that below).

(3) Don’t get lazy. This process will be frustrating. Move.mil is great, but it’s not perfect. It will seem like you have to re-enter a lot of information. You have to make the decision if your things that were damaged are worth your time. This is especially difficult when you dispute offers the TSP makes and escalate it to your military claims office (MCO), see below for more on that.

(4) Remember the big picture. You work hard. Your Soldiers work hard. You probably invest money in creating a household, so that when you leave the military (everyone does) you have something. If you continue to tolerate damages at every PCS, you may find yourself with furniture or items that are unacceptable to keep. In my mind, the only way to stop this is to hold the movers accountable.

The process gets very obscure if you make a claim on something and the TSP denies or counter offers with an unacceptable offer. If this happens, you go into the claim you created in Move.mil and choose to escalate it to the MCO (or you can try to negotiate via email, which I did on a few items and was successful). If you choose to escalate to the MCO, you will have to input data into a different system called PCLAIMS (www.JAGCNet.army.mil/PCLAIMS). Once you escalate an item, you will eventually receive an email stating claims are not automatically transferred to PCLAIMS from the Move.mil based DPS system. So yes, you will have to manually re-enter a lot of information, and you will need the moving documents provided by the moving company since they don’t autopopulate.

At this point, you’re probably very frustrated, I was. You’re probably 6-7 months down the road from when you moved and you’re tired of dealing with it. I fought through it though, wondering how many times the moving companies got away with treating service members like this. If you don’t hold their feet to the fire, who will?

In the end, I PCSed to my current duty station in July of 2018. I am still dealing with the claims process for my house hold goods, but if you stay organized and continue on, things will work out.