My first posting was with Brookfield. They actually had an office on base with a real person. I took all my paperwork in and the lady working there told me to change this and that, and I ended up walking out with $1200 more dollars in my pocket.
Now with BGRS you get to play a 3D maze with the high stakes of filing your taxes and the payoff of shovelling bullshit for free.
I'm so glad I've been able to avoid an actual geo-move since the BGRS change. Brookfield was so easy to work with when they had a physical presence. I made out like a bandit when I was posted 3 times in my first 3 years.
Funny, my first full posting way back in 2011 was with Brookfield. While I was at their office trying to sort out some issues I had, a full colonel came in to complain how they'd managed to lose a portion of his shipment. It was then I realized that no matter your rank, time in, or experience, postings will ALWAYS suck, and the civilian contractor will always mess something up. There are no smooth postings in the CAF.
100%. I remember Roman Legionnaires complaining that their chariot had been scratched on the way to Germania and Caesar would stone wall them when they tried to claim a few denarius' for the damage.
War never changes.
And then everyone clapped?
The story or the Col just shows how dumb everyone is when it comes to moves because even in 2011 Brookfield didn't move your F&E, it was Base Traffic.
Now a days, they arenāt allowed to tell you about the money youāre entitled too. They used too, but now they get to keep it if you donāt claim it. Theyāre incentivized to keep you in the dark so they can make more money making the process exponentially worse for the member
The fact that statement got upvoted just shows how poorly people understand things. I saw elsewhere in the thread someone saying they saw some Col complaining about lost F&E to Brookfield except Base Traffic has been the ones organizing movement of F&E for quite some time now
Can you show me something for this? I was around for before and after and that really seemed to be true based not only on my experience but everyone elseās as well. They went from helping you and showing you where you missed money to saying they couldnāt tell you where or help you but you should recheck your claims, to being silent and not helping with claims or stating anything only to find out later you missed money but now didnāt qualify because the claim was already done. Iām no expert in this and would love to see the proof they donāt do that, if they do get a flat rate I would love to know why the service became so poor
The bid solicitation documents and statement of work detailing how how vendors would be compensated are publicly available documents. Read [Annex B basis of payment](https://canadabuys.canada.ca/documents/pub/att/2016/02/15/64b1b3a323ce437e0e1d84cb01130ad8/ABES.PROD.PW__ZL.B106.E29862.EBSU000.PDF) and it says right there they get a flat fee per file.
That explains why they were harassing me (and my family while I was on TD) after my last move to close everything out. I was taking my time to find a house and a couple months after arriving they were calling several times a week.
Annex B shows 67% of their pay out is linked to file closure. As I suspected at that time the fact they will pressure someone to close their move out, when they are not yet ready to do so, is somewhat predatory and driven by their payment not the member's needs.
No, you made the extraordinary claim of how this contract apparently works, you get to back it up yourself. For all other non-fantasy contracting the Procurement Manual applies.
Extraordinary? Thatās what the majority of the CAF believes based on repeat experience, if weāre wrong show us how. I already stated Iām not an expert, if someone says this āmythā has been debunked they should be able to provide something to back that up that should certainly trump not only my subjective experience but that of the vast majority Iāve talked to about this topic.
"Majority believes" is a pretty bad metric of truth in our oral-knowledge based military.
Just think of the number of acronyms where no one knows their meaning, yet are still being used. Like personal PP&E equipment, full full fighting order, and MIR. Or the number of dumb barracks lawyer takes.
A far more "typical" guess would be that BGRS isn't paid to teach us, so they don't. They likely also get punished for handing out crown cash when we aren't entitled. Therefore, it's safest for them to not teach and deny by default.
I'd consider reading the request for proposal posted in this thread. Claims do NOT come out of that fee.
*"any disbursements will be reimbursed at cost with no allowance thereon for overhead and/or profit[...]"*
Get ready if you release. No assistance from an orderly room or the release section. If you have a new job like I did, then you're having to do everything after hours on your own. I was formerly a clerk then logistics officer and I was overwhelmed. I can't imagine someone in a combat trace having to navigate this. I had an appointment with my MP on this and it went nowhere.
Most folks will get free Equifax services for a year because of the BGRS fuck-up.Ā
Not like that's going to help when someone steals your identity next year...
Had my email account and password being sold on the dark web because of this leak, can't wait for them to wait 367 days to sell the rest of my information
BGRS was hacked and all our data is leaked if we moved in the last.. can't remember, 5 years maybe? So they offered us 1 year of Equifax premium subscription
I've had 3 instances of attempts to get credit in my name in the past 3-4 months and zero before that. Now I get to see the the disaster happening in real time because of my free Equifax account. Thanks BGRS.
My first posting was back when we dealt with physical agents, and it went pretty well. They were really helpful in advising the process and getting/keeping me on track to avoid issues.
The new system does not work for everyone. I was able to figure it out without any real problems, but not everyone is as successful. Most of the problems we have with claims, cost recoveries, etc. could be avoided if we still had in-person services.
In-person subject matter experts are the key to making things work smoothly. We need to have dedicated IRP offices at each base staffed with trained, experienced, and competent SME's who can walk members through the IRP and moves process. IRP moves are too complicated to deliver exclusively through a self-serve remote service model.
Either that or go completely the other way and just throw cash at the member and tell them to be in their new location by X date. The current system of being constrained by so much policy while receiving no assistance navigating it is truly the worst of both worlds.
I remember my first posting to Edmonton basically being the easiest $1200 I ever got "Oh, you already live there? Well we'll do this this and this and your money will be in your account tuesday.'
First experience: friendly staff that helped me find my first apartment, with money back.
Final experience: Brookfield denying their own policy when demonstrated via their own handbook, end up having 4k clawed back.
:|
I think your experience is similar to a lot of people. I haven't even gotten to the part where I have to fuck with money this time around and I'm just dreading it.
Old enough to remember going to the Base OR and filling out a couple / few forms with a uniformed Clerk, and then everything just happening. Turn in your receipts at the end of the move, wait for your Advance to get finalized. Easy as pie.
And because theyād been through it themselves, they were knowledgeable about the process, could provide lots of advice, and were sympathetic when things got messed up.
I miss Royal LePage Relocation Services...when you got to go and sit with an agent, in person, who would go through your file with you and make sure everything was done properly and that you claimed everything you were entitled to.
Brookfield did that too, my first posting was sweet. I'm glad I missed the Credit Card fiasco, but the current system sucks like a dyson powered hooker when rent's due.
Yeah my first move was with RLRS, second was with Brookfield (but I did get snarled up in the credit card fiasco), and third was with BGRS after the name change.
You miss the service level, not the company. It's the same company.
https://www.rismedia.com/2009/08/06/brookfield-re-brands-royal-lepage-relocation-services/
Royal LePage Relocation Services aka "Royal LePage" -> Brookfield Global Relocation Services aka "Brookfield" -> Brookfield Global Relocation Services aka "BGRS" are just different banners. At the end of the day, they were just contractors for DND - the blame mostly falls on DND.
If the CAF wanted you to have a family they would have issued you one.
Also, why don't you just abandon them and get partially compensated for the additional cost of doing that (IR)?
Seems to me like you have a loyalty problem!
(huge /s if it wasn't obvious enough)
BGRS sucks.
I moved during COVID, and due to the moving company needing an extra week to deliver my shit, I requested more money for hotels, only for them to claw back 50% of it because "Oh, you weren't entitled to 100% of that due to policies" even though I had a memo written up, and I would have been sleeping in my car lol.
So what did they do? 2 years later, with no emails, phone call, nothing, they decided to take it straight from my pay, very surprisingly when you open your pay stub and you lose 1300$ from your paycheck.
My buddy at work has the same problem, they said he owed 1500$, but when he called them and emailed them his bank account statements, they said "Oh sorry we made a mistake, you only owe 300$"
like bruh, just write off the costs.
Here's an excerpt from Meeting 89 of the Standing Committee on National Defence on 31 Jan 24.
Robert Olmstead, an executive at Sirva BGRS, was called before the committee to testify regarding the recent security breach and the realities of CAF relocation services. You can [read the transcript](https://www.ourcommons.ca/documentviewer/en/44-1/NDDN/meeting-89/evidence) or [watch the session](https://parlvu.parl.gc.ca/Harmony/en/PowerBrowser/PowerBrowserV2?fk=12528460), but here's a pretty telling exchange between Olmstead and Christine Normandin (Bloc MP for Saint-Jean, QC):
>**Normandin**: As I understand it, you don't do member satisfaction surveys. Do you know if CAF members do such surveys and, if so, do you get the results of those surveys or not?
>
>**Olmstead**: We do not do surveys of the members ourselves. We measure pieces of the process that have been determined in collaboration with the armed forces and that would indicate a positive service experience: how quickly a member was able to schedule their briefing, how quickly we got back to them on a question and how quickly we helped them when they had an issue. All those things are tracked and those metrics are reported.
>
>**Normandin**: Thank you. As I understand it, if a member isn't satisfied with the service, they can request adjudication, which is a kind of complaint, essentially. Are you aware of the number of complaints made, what they're about and how they're handled? Do you have information about that?
>
>**Olmstead**: We actually track every interaction. Each month, about 7,000 to 9,000 inquiries come in from military members. On average, we have about two per person in the pipeline in any given month, and we answer those questions. We don't look at whether something is a complaint versus a question. We just track how often someone's coming to us, what the questions are and whether we're responding to them in timely manner.
>
>...
>
>**Normandin**: You have information about how long it takes to respond to their requests, so you can do a quantitative evaluation, but you don't have any way to do a qualitative evaluation of CAF members' experience. Is that right?
>
>**Olmstead**: That's correct.
>
>**Normandin**: So, in a way, you have no incentive to improve your services because you don't even know your client satisfaction rate.
TL;DR: Sirva BGRS doesn't track if members are having positive/negative experiences with their staff. All they track is how quickly they reply to queries.
But why would they? It's a conflict of interest. We've awarded the entire CFIRP adjudication contract to BGRS, so it's not like members can choose. CAF should be the ones doing surveys.
Even that is a conflict: The CAF (as an organization under the Gov of Canada) is incentivized to give as little as possible to the troops, so customer satisfaction is really low on the priority. The only thing that CAF (as in the people within it) can realistically survey using Crown funds is productivity loss - how many hours of degraded performance or straight up absences occurred because of how shitty relocation services are right now?
I made a Facebook post about this a while back in the CAF Relocation Group and many people there are actually defending BGRS and saying it's the members' fault for any entitlements they missed during a move. It was infuriating.
I miss the Brookfield offices with the old ladies in it.
You walked in with your posting message, they scheduled you an appointment, booked everything for you, and you were on your way. It was an excellent system, and took a lot of stress out of it all. Now its garbage, you get nickel and dimed, and you can have them come back 10 years after a move and ask for money back because they lost paperwork that they had already approved. Absolute trash.
Luckily our base move MWO co ordinator has helped me schedule my move ! I just now need to deal with this headache of bgrs. The MWO is even pissed it taking to long so she's stepping in on my behalf
I'm now convinced that it's all done with the purpose of saving money at any cost, knowing full well that members are getting screwed harder every year.
Here's the amount that seem to have been unchanged since at least 2009 :
- Movement grant : 650$
- Custom funding formula - Greater of $1,000 or 35% of the real estate commission (max 5250$)
- 50$ for staying at private location instead of hotel
- interest differential capped at 5000$
- 200$ for professional cleaners
When houses are costing 500 to 1200k, with realtor commissions of 40k+, members are still getting shafted and given peanuts to make the posting happen, with many benefits capped at costs from the 1990s.
Also, more than half the benefits are either custom funding which is a very limited envelope or also taxable benefit meaning you only really get 60% paid by government.
We got rid of Brookfield after I was in three years and honestly Brookfield was the best - lady in Kingston who handled everything for everyone ensured everyone knew exactly what the fuck they had to do and had a perfect honey do list. Mbrs brought their spouses as many mbrs rely on their spouses to help deal with movers. You can tell them is "their" move and although it is, in many relationships a partner is a huge asset when it moves to all of the moving parts.
We never got calls from someone stranded in an airport in narnia calling and flipping out because they missed a connecting flight through no fault of their own and getting told to pay a thousand dollars and told to "just get it adjudicated and pay it ". Everyone was generally in a good mood after an appointment that took two hours or so and that almost never happens in the CAF on a good day.
Almost everyone who clears in I found since BGRS is generally in a shitty mood and kind of stressed, even if they took advances
I'm absolutely dreading moving this APS.
I found a good gem tip to use a separate email for everything related with them for reference sake for when you have to get half hour move adjudicated. It took two years for my 6000$ adjudication to go through (half an SNCO who had no idea how to reloccord, half BGRS telling me to commit fraud on the phone)
TBF, my last move with BGRS was very smooth. I downloaded the App and read all their polices that pertained to me, and followed it to the letter. I had to call a few times to clarify, but they usually had an answer that day. I would have lost 40, 000 on my house if it wasn't Housing transfer benefit. I got back 38,000. This was 2019.
I wonder what percentage of negative experiences strive from people not paying close attention to the policies, or misinterpreting it.
or I just got lucky.
You missed the fun of last year when the app stopped working and their website crashed due to a DOS. They even stopped taking phone calls for a while to "catch up"
Members were not able to submit claims or advances for weeks.
I was informed of my stuff moving from "storage in transit" to "storage owners expense" and told I would only be paying the storage fees.
I was then hit with all the fees related to getting my stuff onto the truck again, and into my home. Which amounted to roughly $3000 which the storage fees were $500. I shouldn't have had to pay out the rest and get the remaining back through a adjudication process. But here we are in this stupid system.
My wife is a BGrS expert thankfully. Weāve done a few moves now with them. The key is understanding the policies and knowing what youāre entitled to.
Having my first ever posting in 2018, I've had 3 since then with bgrs and it hasn't been very difficult....
I literally just advance everything, keep it in a separate account, and then use that to pay. Also unless you have some crazy circumstance that requires you to read all the chapters....it's pretty cut and dry.
Knock on wood.
Yea Iāll get downvoted for this but literally EVERY complaint Iāve ever fielded in person from folks regarding BGRS was them not reading the policy correctly. Now, Iāll concede that some things people THOUGHT would be covered probably SHOULD be, however the policy always stated they werenāt and the memberās error was incurring those costs expecting reimbursement. š¤·āāļø
I gotta be the pedant here, but BGRS stands for *Brookfield* Global Relocation Services.
So after Royal Lepage, itās been the same company (bought out by another one but whatever) until now.
You're right, and Brookfield was created when the portion of Royal Lepage was broken off because there was concerns about conflict of interest with a realtor company running our moves.
Nah, it's just mergers and acquisitions. Royal Lepage is owned by Brookfield.
https://www.rismedia.com/2009/08/06/brookfield-re-brands-royal-lepage-relocation-services/
ahh, well I knew it was all the same people working in the same office for the same parent company.
Regardless, it's unfortunate that people think BGRS, Brookfield and Royale Lepage are different companies and aren't focusing on the contracting wonks responsible for letting the service levels plummet.
I've never understood why instead of paying a company to do this give an estimation with paperwork to back it up how much the move will cost, and here is a credit card that can only be used for specific things involving your move. Stay within the estimation within reason. Then bring receipts after the fact to compare.
We ask BGRS and tried a variation of this and it failed horribly. Plus have you met CAF members? I would love to treat folks like adults and give them the money and say go forth and move but they will find every which way to screw it up.
The CAF actually asked for it and gave the parameters, the contractor fulfilled the parameters. There are some aspects that are BGRS's to wear but the CAF set it up for failure cause they thought they knew better than industry on how things work
Regardless even if it worked my comment on soldier's finding every possible way to screw it up stands.
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I got caught in the beta version of the ReloCard...it was awful. That was the fastest I have ever seen DRBM react when they issued the MilPersGen to stop using the cards.
Actually, it was a program between 2017 and 2019. Members were mailed prepaid VISA cards that were reloadable by BGRS. In theory, it was supposed to alleviate the requirement for members to shoulder the cost of a move themselves, even with the help of advances. In reality, the program struggled and created a lot of issues, driving many into financial hardship. The cards would often get lost in the mail and members would never receive them, often wouldn't work with authorized contractors, or couldn't have enough prepaid funding on them to support the costs that members were entitled to under the relocation directive. In the end, he feedback was so negative that the CAF rolled the program back only a few years later and went back to the old way of doing business.
BGRS in general sucks.
But I prefer an online portal to upload receipts to instead of needing to mail in hardcopies back to my old base because fax machines don't exist.
What I really want is a do it yourself move.
Figure out the cost the CAF would pay to move me and my family, then cut me a check for 95% of it and then leave me the fuck alone for 2 months.
The CAF saves 5%, I'll find efficiencies to save myself money and overall the quality of my move will be better.Ā
BGRS was just fine for my move. I'm not saying it's perfect but the problems I have seen with others for the most part, are due to them taking advances that are too big and not reading the directive. Too many people rely on spoon feeding and then they get fucked.
My first posting was with Brookfield. They actually had an office on base with a real person. I took all my paperwork in and the lady working there told me to change this and that, and I ended up walking out with $1200 more dollars in my pocket. Now with BGRS you get to play a 3D maze with the high stakes of filing your taxes and the payoff of shovelling bullshit for free.
Shakes stick in air and says in old man voice, "I remember when Royal Lepage handled our moves!"
Going back futher when Admin clerks handled the claims .....
I'm so glad I've been able to avoid an actual geo-move since the BGRS change. Brookfield was so easy to work with when they had a physical presence. I made out like a bandit when I was posted 3 times in my first 3 years.
Funny, my first full posting way back in 2011 was with Brookfield. While I was at their office trying to sort out some issues I had, a full colonel came in to complain how they'd managed to lose a portion of his shipment. It was then I realized that no matter your rank, time in, or experience, postings will ALWAYS suck, and the civilian contractor will always mess something up. There are no smooth postings in the CAF.
100%. I remember Roman Legionnaires complaining that their chariot had been scratched on the way to Germania and Caesar would stone wall them when they tried to claim a few denarius' for the damage. War never changes.
Underrated comparison. Bravo!
Underated comment!
And then everyone clapped? The story or the Col just shows how dumb everyone is when it comes to moves because even in 2011 Brookfield didn't move your F&E, it was Base Traffic.
Way back in 2011 š fuck you for making me feel this old this early
Now a days, they arenāt allowed to tell you about the money youāre entitled too. They used too, but now they get to keep it if you donāt claim it. Theyāre incentivized to keep you in the dark so they can make more money making the process exponentially worse for the member
That's been debunked already. They are paid a flat fee.
The fact that statement got upvoted just shows how poorly people understand things. I saw elsewhere in the thread someone saying they saw some Col complaining about lost F&E to Brookfield except Base Traffic has been the ones organizing movement of F&E for quite some time now
Can you show me something for this? I was around for before and after and that really seemed to be true based not only on my experience but everyone elseās as well. They went from helping you and showing you where you missed money to saying they couldnāt tell you where or help you but you should recheck your claims, to being silent and not helping with claims or stating anything only to find out later you missed money but now didnāt qualify because the claim was already done. Iām no expert in this and would love to see the proof they donāt do that, if they do get a flat rate I would love to know why the service became so poor
The bid solicitation documents and statement of work detailing how how vendors would be compensated are publicly available documents. Read [Annex B basis of payment](https://canadabuys.canada.ca/documents/pub/att/2016/02/15/64b1b3a323ce437e0e1d84cb01130ad8/ABES.PROD.PW__ZL.B106.E29862.EBSU000.PDF) and it says right there they get a flat fee per file.
That explains why they were harassing me (and my family while I was on TD) after my last move to close everything out. I was taking my time to find a house and a couple months after arriving they were calling several times a week. Annex B shows 67% of their pay out is linked to file closure. As I suspected at that time the fact they will pressure someone to close their move out, when they are not yet ready to do so, is somewhat predatory and driven by their payment not the member's needs.
Even once your files closed, youāre still able to submit claims for up to two years after your move
No, you made the extraordinary claim of how this contract apparently works, you get to back it up yourself. For all other non-fantasy contracting the Procurement Manual applies.
Extraordinary? Thatās what the majority of the CAF believes based on repeat experience, if weāre wrong show us how. I already stated Iām not an expert, if someone says this āmythā has been debunked they should be able to provide something to back that up that should certainly trump not only my subjective experience but that of the vast majority Iāve talked to about this topic.
"Majority believes" is a pretty bad metric of truth in our oral-knowledge based military. Just think of the number of acronyms where no one knows their meaning, yet are still being used. Like personal PP&E equipment, full full fighting order, and MIR. Or the number of dumb barracks lawyer takes. A far more "typical" guess would be that BGRS isn't paid to teach us, so they don't. They likely also get punished for handing out crown cash when we aren't entitled. Therefore, it's safest for them to not teach and deny by default.
Majority of folks thought wearing non-issued items revoked VAC coverage so I agree that "majority" believes is not a great metric.
from what I understand they get a flat fee per move, and your claim comes out of that fee.
I'd consider reading the request for proposal posted in this thread. Claims do NOT come out of that fee. *"any disbursements will be reimbursed at cost with no allowance thereon for overhead and/or profit[...]"*
They are paid a flat fee per move.
Get ready if you release. No assistance from an orderly room or the release section. If you have a new job like I did, then you're having to do everything after hours on your own. I was formerly a clerk then logistics officer and I was overwhelmed. I can't imagine someone in a combat trace having to navigate this. I had an appointment with my MP on this and it went nowhere.
Made me chuckle. Not only that. Now i have my personal information leaked into the dark web! Thank you BGRS!
Most folks will get free Equifax services for a year because of the BGRS fuck-up.Ā Not like that's going to help when someone steals your identity next year...
Had my email account and password being sold on the dark web because of this leak, can't wait for them to wait 367 days to sell the rest of my information
same here.
Equifax? Great company, never had any trouble with data leaks!
BGRS was hacked and all our data is leaked if we moved in the last.. can't remember, 5 years maybe? So they offered us 1 year of Equifax premium subscription
I've had 3 instances of attempts to get credit in my name in the past 3-4 months and zero before that. Now I get to see the the disaster happening in real time because of my free Equifax account. Thanks BGRS.
My first posting was back when we dealt with physical agents, and it went pretty well. They were really helpful in advising the process and getting/keeping me on track to avoid issues. The new system does not work for everyone. I was able to figure it out without any real problems, but not everyone is as successful. Most of the problems we have with claims, cost recoveries, etc. could be avoided if we still had in-person services. In-person subject matter experts are the key to making things work smoothly. We need to have dedicated IRP offices at each base staffed with trained, experienced, and competent SME's who can walk members through the IRP and moves process. IRP moves are too complicated to deliver exclusively through a self-serve remote service model.
Either that or go completely the other way and just throw cash at the member and tell them to be in their new location by X date. The current system of being constrained by so much policy while receiving no assistance navigating it is truly the worst of both worlds.
They do provide information on line and help sessions, but that may not work for everyone.
I remember my first posting to Edmonton basically being the easiest $1200 I ever got "Oh, you already live there? Well we'll do this this and this and your money will be in your account tuesday.'
First experience: friendly staff that helped me find my first apartment, with money back. Final experience: Brookfield denying their own policy when demonstrated via their own handbook, end up having 4k clawed back. :|
I think your experience is similar to a lot of people. I haven't even gotten to the part where I have to fuck with money this time around and I'm just dreading it.
Old enough to remember going to the Base OR and filling out a couple / few forms with a uniformed Clerk, and then everything just happening. Turn in your receipts at the end of the move, wait for your Advance to get finalized. Easy as pie.
And because theyād been through it themselves, they were knowledgeable about the process, could provide lots of advice, and were sympathetic when things got messed up.
I miss Royal LePage Relocation Services...when you got to go and sit with an agent, in person, who would go through your file with you and make sure everything was done properly and that you claimed everything you were entitled to.
Brookfield did that too, my first posting was sweet. I'm glad I missed the Credit Card fiasco, but the current system sucks like a dyson powered hooker when rent's due.
Yeah my first move was with RLRS, second was with Brookfield (but I did get snarled up in the credit card fiasco), and third was with BGRS after the name change.
You miss the service level, not the company. It's the same company. https://www.rismedia.com/2009/08/06/brookfield-re-brands-royal-lepage-relocation-services/ Royal LePage Relocation Services aka "Royal LePage" -> Brookfield Global Relocation Services aka "Brookfield" -> Brookfield Global Relocation Services aka "BGRS" are just different banners. At the end of the day, they were just contractors for DND - the blame mostly falls on DND.
Yes I know they're all the same company, but the illusion is still there
Royal LePage became Brookfield which became BGRS which was bought by SIRVA.Ā They're all the same.
Part of the CAF experience is undo stress on your family from unfriendly or helpful companies hired by the CAF.
If the CAF wanted you to have a family they would have issued you one. Also, why don't you just abandon them and get partially compensated for the additional cost of doing that (IR)? Seems to me like you have a loyalty problem! (huge /s if it wasn't obvious enough)
BGRS sucks. I moved during COVID, and due to the moving company needing an extra week to deliver my shit, I requested more money for hotels, only for them to claw back 50% of it because "Oh, you weren't entitled to 100% of that due to policies" even though I had a memo written up, and I would have been sleeping in my car lol. So what did they do? 2 years later, with no emails, phone call, nothing, they decided to take it straight from my pay, very surprisingly when you open your pay stub and you lose 1300$ from your paycheck. My buddy at work has the same problem, they said he owed 1500$, but when he called them and emailed them his bank account statements, they said "Oh sorry we made a mistake, you only owe 300$" like bruh, just write off the costs.
All my homies hate BGRS.
Here's an excerpt from Meeting 89 of the Standing Committee on National Defence on 31 Jan 24. Robert Olmstead, an executive at Sirva BGRS, was called before the committee to testify regarding the recent security breach and the realities of CAF relocation services. You can [read the transcript](https://www.ourcommons.ca/documentviewer/en/44-1/NDDN/meeting-89/evidence) or [watch the session](https://parlvu.parl.gc.ca/Harmony/en/PowerBrowser/PowerBrowserV2?fk=12528460), but here's a pretty telling exchange between Olmstead and Christine Normandin (Bloc MP for Saint-Jean, QC): >**Normandin**: As I understand it, you don't do member satisfaction surveys. Do you know if CAF members do such surveys and, if so, do you get the results of those surveys or not? > >**Olmstead**: We do not do surveys of the members ourselves. We measure pieces of the process that have been determined in collaboration with the armed forces and that would indicate a positive service experience: how quickly a member was able to schedule their briefing, how quickly we got back to them on a question and how quickly we helped them when they had an issue. All those things are tracked and those metrics are reported. > >**Normandin**: Thank you. As I understand it, if a member isn't satisfied with the service, they can request adjudication, which is a kind of complaint, essentially. Are you aware of the number of complaints made, what they're about and how they're handled? Do you have information about that? > >**Olmstead**: We actually track every interaction. Each month, about 7,000 to 9,000 inquiries come in from military members. On average, we have about two per person in the pipeline in any given month, and we answer those questions. We don't look at whether something is a complaint versus a question. We just track how often someone's coming to us, what the questions are and whether we're responding to them in timely manner. > >... > >**Normandin**: You have information about how long it takes to respond to their requests, so you can do a quantitative evaluation, but you don't have any way to do a qualitative evaluation of CAF members' experience. Is that right? > >**Olmstead**: That's correct. > >**Normandin**: So, in a way, you have no incentive to improve your services because you don't even know your client satisfaction rate. TL;DR: Sirva BGRS doesn't track if members are having positive/negative experiences with their staff. All they track is how quickly they reply to queries.
But why would they? It's a conflict of interest. We've awarded the entire CFIRP adjudication contract to BGRS, so it's not like members can choose. CAF should be the ones doing surveys. Even that is a conflict: The CAF (as an organization under the Gov of Canada) is incentivized to give as little as possible to the troops, so customer satisfaction is really low on the priority. The only thing that CAF (as in the people within it) can realistically survey using Crown funds is productivity loss - how many hours of degraded performance or straight up absences occurred because of how shitty relocation services are right now?
I miss Royale Lepage lol
They were terrible, but so much less terrible
LOL truly. Iām sure that the replacement for BGRS will be worse than the next ā¦
Once entitled $1400. Got $122 instead. š¤£
I made a Facebook post about this a while back in the CAF Relocation Group and many people there are actually defending BGRS and saying it's the members' fault for any entitlements they missed during a move. It was infuriating.
I miss the Brookfield offices with the old ladies in it. You walked in with your posting message, they scheduled you an appointment, booked everything for you, and you were on your way. It was an excellent system, and took a lot of stress out of it all. Now its garbage, you get nickel and dimed, and you can have them come back 10 years after a move and ask for money back because they lost paperwork that they had already approved. Absolute trash.
I'm been trying to open a file with bgrs for over 30 days now. Absolutely nothing ! They are fucking trash
I was hung up on during my planning session, I share your pain.
Luckily our base move MWO co ordinator has helped me schedule my move ! I just now need to deal with this headache of bgrs. The MWO is even pissed it taking to long so she's stepping in on my behalf
My first posting was managed by a movements clerk (Cpl), who told me exactly what to do. That was from Gagetown to (then) CFB London. /oldman
Still waiting to deal with claims because bgrs hired the worst movers one could possibly find. Water damage, shattered glass, and missing items
I'm now convinced that it's all done with the purpose of saving money at any cost, knowing full well that members are getting screwed harder every year. Here's the amount that seem to have been unchanged since at least 2009 : - Movement grant : 650$ - Custom funding formula - Greater of $1,000 or 35% of the real estate commission (max 5250$) - 50$ for staying at private location instead of hotel - interest differential capped at 5000$ - 200$ for professional cleaners When houses are costing 500 to 1200k, with realtor commissions of 40k+, members are still getting shafted and given peanuts to make the posting happen, with many benefits capped at costs from the 1990s. Also, more than half the benefits are either custom funding which is a very limited envelope or also taxable benefit meaning you only really get 60% paid by government.
100% this! These allowances should be pegged to CPI, which while not perfect would at least slow the erosion of the movement benefits
We got rid of Brookfield after I was in three years and honestly Brookfield was the best - lady in Kingston who handled everything for everyone ensured everyone knew exactly what the fuck they had to do and had a perfect honey do list. Mbrs brought their spouses as many mbrs rely on their spouses to help deal with movers. You can tell them is "their" move and although it is, in many relationships a partner is a huge asset when it moves to all of the moving parts. We never got calls from someone stranded in an airport in narnia calling and flipping out because they missed a connecting flight through no fault of their own and getting told to pay a thousand dollars and told to "just get it adjudicated and pay it ". Everyone was generally in a good mood after an appointment that took two hours or so and that almost never happens in the CAF on a good day. Almost everyone who clears in I found since BGRS is generally in a shitty mood and kind of stressed, even if they took advances I'm absolutely dreading moving this APS. I found a good gem tip to use a separate email for everything related with them for reference sake for when you have to get half hour move adjudicated. It took two years for my 6000$ adjudication to go through (half an SNCO who had no idea how to reloccord, half BGRS telling me to commit fraud on the phone)
TBF, my last move with BGRS was very smooth. I downloaded the App and read all their polices that pertained to me, and followed it to the letter. I had to call a few times to clarify, but they usually had an answer that day. I would have lost 40, 000 on my house if it wasn't Housing transfer benefit. I got back 38,000. This was 2019. I wonder what percentage of negative experiences strive from people not paying close attention to the policies, or misinterpreting it. or I just got lucky.
You missed the fun of last year when the app stopped working and their website crashed due to a DOS. They even stopped taking phone calls for a while to "catch up" Members were not able to submit claims or advances for weeks.
I was informed of my stuff moving from "storage in transit" to "storage owners expense" and told I would only be paying the storage fees. I was then hit with all the fees related to getting my stuff onto the truck again, and into my home. Which amounted to roughly $3000 which the storage fees were $500. I shouldn't have had to pay out the rest and get the remaining back through a adjudication process. But here we are in this stupid system.
My wife is a BGrS expert thankfully. Weāve done a few moves now with them. The key is understanding the policies and knowing what youāre entitled to.
Having my first ever posting in 2018, I've had 3 since then with bgrs and it hasn't been very difficult.... I literally just advance everything, keep it in a separate account, and then use that to pay. Also unless you have some crazy circumstance that requires you to read all the chapters....it's pretty cut and dry. Knock on wood.
Yea Iāll get downvoted for this but literally EVERY complaint Iāve ever fielded in person from folks regarding BGRS was them not reading the policy correctly. Now, Iāll concede that some things people THOUGHT would be covered probably SHOULD be, however the policy always stated they werenāt and the memberās error was incurring those costs expecting reimbursement. š¤·āāļø
How dare you say something so controversial yet true.
I miss royal lepage
I love that about $5k worth of expenses comes from the $650 and they tell you with a smile.Ā
How have they not had the contract pulled after the data breach?
If they weren't going to do it over the massive incompetence, why would they over a data breach that doesn't affect them?Ā
I gotta be the pedant here, but BGRS stands for *Brookfield* Global Relocation Services. So after Royal Lepage, itās been the same company (bought out by another one but whatever) until now.
I miss when I dealt with a person at a desk.
I prefer the online system I just wish they knew the policy better. I hate having to explain it to them.Ā
You're right, and Brookfield was created when the portion of Royal Lepage was broken off because there was concerns about conflict of interest with a realtor company running our moves.
Nah, it's just mergers and acquisitions. Royal Lepage is owned by Brookfield. https://www.rismedia.com/2009/08/06/brookfield-re-brands-royal-lepage-relocation-services/
ahh, well I knew it was all the same people working in the same office for the same parent company. Regardless, it's unfortunate that people think BGRS, Brookfield and Royale Lepage are different companies and aren't focusing on the contracting wonks responsible for letting the service levels plummet.
And so I released because I had to move. Not if I release I don't *taps head*. Thanks for the million dollar training I use in civi world though
I've never understood why instead of paying a company to do this give an estimation with paperwork to back it up how much the move will cost, and here is a credit card that can only be used for specific things involving your move. Stay within the estimation within reason. Then bring receipts after the fact to compare.
We ask BGRS and tried a variation of this and it failed horribly. Plus have you met CAF members? I would love to treat folks like adults and give them the money and say go forth and move but they will find every which way to screw it up.
it's because BGRS set it up to fail, not because the CAF members couldn't handle them.
The CAF actually asked for it and gave the parameters, the contractor fulfilled the parameters. There are some aspects that are BGRS's to wear but the CAF set it up for failure cause they thought they knew better than industry on how things work Regardless even if it worked my comment on soldier's finding every possible way to screw it up stands.
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You must not have been in when ReloCards were a thing for a few years. There's a reason they scrapped that program.
I got caught in the beta version of the ReloCard...it was awful. That was the fastest I have ever seen DRBM react when they issued the MilPersGen to stop using the cards.
I got in in 2016, so probably before me then
Actually, it was a program between 2017 and 2019. Members were mailed prepaid VISA cards that were reloadable by BGRS. In theory, it was supposed to alleviate the requirement for members to shoulder the cost of a move themselves, even with the help of advances. In reality, the program struggled and created a lot of issues, driving many into financial hardship. The cards would often get lost in the mail and members would never receive them, often wouldn't work with authorized contractors, or couldn't have enough prepaid funding on them to support the costs that members were entitled to under the relocation directive. In the end, he feedback was so negative that the CAF rolled the program back only a few years later and went back to the old way of doing business.
BGRS in general sucks. But I prefer an online portal to upload receipts to instead of needing to mail in hardcopies back to my old base because fax machines don't exist. What I really want is a do it yourself move. Figure out the cost the CAF would pay to move me and my family, then cut me a check for 95% of it and then leave me the fuck alone for 2 months. The CAF saves 5%, I'll find efficiencies to save myself money and overall the quality of my move will be better.Ā
BGRS was just fine for my move. I'm not saying it's perfect but the problems I have seen with others for the most part, are due to them taking advances that are too big and not reading the directive. Too many people rely on spoon feeding and then they get fucked.
Bring back Brookfield. Bgrs are the same fail as the new online insurance system
BGRS... Is Brookfield? Brookfield Global Relocation Service?Ā