Changes to Clothing Online point system

[Wynne]

I must say, it's great to get the message about this AFTER my account was locked.  I wish I could have spent my darn points, I needed DEU's..but my papers weren't in to switch me from army to air.  So super sneaky....

 

[armyvern]

I must say, it's great to get the message about this AFTER my account was locked.  I wish I could have spent my darn points, I needed DEU's..but my papers weren't in to switch me from army to air.  So super sneaky....

Yep, nice eh??

Everyone was locked out a full day & a half before their points expired ... and a full day & a half before this new policy "supposedly" was going to take effect on 01 April IAW CANFORGEN. That's not on.

 

[Towards_the_gap]

Is it me, or are the bean counting bastards in Ottawa really going the extra mile to screw and f**K the CF/PS every which way they can, from multiple directions at a belt fed pace as of late?  ie.  the plans to charge arms/legs for parking, cutting PLD where they can, buggering with the points so they won't be on the hook for as much clothing...... while at the same time they waste money on shit like the CNC pins we are stuck with for the year.  Every time I look up they seem to be clawing back here and booting us in the groin there every chance they get.  Bastards.  Christ! they don't even have the grace to have decent long johns available to the Navy on-line.... :rage:

Spend a year in the British Army and then try and complain like that.....

I still find it boggling the amount of ways to get rich in the CF, be it a long career course out of province, an IR posting, or hell, even getting posted from say Edmonton to Pet will put you up tens of thousands or so...And like petamocto says, nevermind the money you get on tour...

Losing points for a uniform  I wear once a year is not an issue.  *edited to correct bum spelling

 

[armyvern]

Losing points for a uniform  I wear once a year is not an issue.  *edited to correct bum spelling

That's all well and good ... unless you're posted to a Unit that wears them everyday.

 

[Gunner98]

Spend a year in the British Army and then try and complain like that.....

I still find it boggling the amount of ways to get rich in the CF, be it a long career course out of province, an IR posting, or hell, even getting posted from say Edmonton to Pet will put you up tens of thousands or so...And like petamocto says, nevermind the money you get on tour...

I would never classify a member of the CF as rich and going on tour as a "gold mine".  Let's say that we are adequately compensated and our entitlements are met in accordance with what civilian public servants receive who are also subject to the same Treasury Board regulations.  Just ask someone who has served more than 15 years if this was always the case!  The tour "gold mine" is more like a coal mine - you may or may not survive the venture, if you do it is hardly like winning the lottery it is more like winning a bingo jackpot. 

As for the clothing online - IMHO 500 points per year is sufficient and like annual leave - use it or lose it seems fair.  And will we ever get a summer weight Army uniform?  The cost of one-year's worth combat underwear and socks would pretty much equal at least the cost of materials of a tunic and  two pairs of pants.  I know I would be happy to wear my undies for an extra year to avoid another summer in wool trousers, anyone else?  Perhaps you rich guys already have your uniforms tailored at Savile Row.

 

[SeanNewman]

That's all well and good ... unless you're posted to a Unit that wears them everyday.

It's still insignificant in the big picture.  What other job can you have basically no education and be making $50k+ per year within a couple years of joining?

I know things were not always this way, and in the 80s and 90s the CF was underpaid but that's far from true now.

In principle of course you should have your uniform paid for and replaced often, and you shouldn't lose a ton of money on a posting (not immediately but over time), but we make a heckuva lot of money.

At the end of the day everyone could complain about something financially.  I got posted from an LDA unit in Ontario to a non-LDA unit in NB where I pay far more property and income tax for less service, but due to how much the CF pays me it's hard to complain with my new house filled with new things and a new(ish) car.

 

[Gunner98]

It's still insignificant in the big picture.  What other job can you have basically no education and be making $50k+ per year within a couple years of joining?

Let's see maybe a prison guard, fireman, policeman, plumber or a welder or just about any tradesman who have the same training levels in or out of uniform (unless of course you classify the Police foundations diploma as being rocket science).

 

[SeanNewman]

Simian,

All of those jobs you posted work far more hours and arguably harder if you average out how much they work in an hour.

Yes soldiers do some extremely grueling things that push the limits of 100% effort, but we also sit in a lot of lectures do routine tasks that take 10% effort.

A tradesman (if he actually wants to make money) has to do a lot of 12-hour days at 70% effort.

Back on topic here, soldiers are not underpaid and that is at the heart of what I am writing.

 

[Gunner98]

Back on topic here, soldiers are not underpaid and that is at the heart of what I am writing.

I concur - soldiers are not underpaid but they are hardly "rich" and making a "gold mine".  As for back on topic, I was following you and others into a silly rabbit hole to WTF-land!  I take it you have no university-aged children where you are shelling out $20K/year and they can't get student loans because you are so "not underpaid"!

Yes those firemen sitting around the firehouse and those policemen sitting in their cruisers or donut shops - work so much harder than we do.

 

[Towards_the_gap]

That's all well and good ... unless you're posted to a Unit that wears them everyday.

Good point. However, and I ask out of ignorance, having worn DEU's oh maybe 4 times in total, how often do the shirts/pants/tunic really need replacing? Is the points balance insufficient? I ask because the existing system seems to do the trick, and it is a stretch to say that the treasury is screwing us over again.

To Simian Turner - I guess 'rich' was a bad choice of words. But there is a reason you see all those $40-60,000 trucks driving around any major base.

 

[SeanNewman]

Simian,

You did not read my post correctly.  When I mentioned fire and police it was to say that their lives are probably in danger as much as ours.

Yes they sit around doing nothing sometimes, as do a whoooooooole lot of people in the CF.

I am surrounded by people who do have university-aged children (most of them CFRs who were MWOs and are now Capts), and most of them have their houses almost paid off and aren't struggling to put their kids through school.

By the time you get to the point of having university-aged kids, odds are you're close to a MWO or Major and making $80,000+ per year, and have gone on a lot of tours to pay off $25,000 chunks of your mortgage in one shot.

If you are in the CF and poor right now it is due to your terrible financial planning, not because you are underpaid.

 

[Franko]

The topic here is the Clothing On-Line changes....not pay or how much some troops just "sit around doing nothing".

Back on topic.

The Army.ca Staff

 

[Occam]

As for the clothing online - IMHO 500 points per year is sufficient and like annual leave - use it or lose it seems fair.  And will we ever get a summer weight Army uniform?  The cost of one-year's worth combat underwear and socks would pretty much equal at least the cost of materials of a tunic and  two pairs of pants.  I know I would be happy to wear my undies for an extra year to avoid another summer in wool trousers, anyone else?  Perhaps you rich guys already have your uniforms tailored at Savile Row.

500 points isn't enough if you had to replace everything like gabardine, tunics and pants (for the AF types leading charmed lives with summer weight and winter weight uniforms  ), sweater, raincoat and shirts.

It's fine and dandy to say you're going to implement a regulation saying you can only carry over 300 points from now on.  It's quite another to give first wind of the new regulation on 30 Mar (the day before the last day of the FY), but lock everyone out of their account until the rules are applied to your points balance on 1 Apr and all those points get flushed into the bit bucket.

If you haven't logged into Clothing Online lately, you're now greeted with this:

The points allotted to you through Clothing Online are the property of DND and are provided to you for the sole purpose of acquiring essential military clothing to perform your duties in support of the Canadian Forces and are not for personal use.

By clicking "I Agree" you recognize that all points belong to DND and that any items acquired with your points are for your professional duties and not for personal use.
​

Geez, did someone notice a severe rise in the number of people wearing the rubber overboots with civvies, or something?  :

 

[armyvern]

500 points isn't enough if you had to replace everything like gabardine, tunics and pants (for the AF types leading charmed lives with summer weight and winter weight uniforms  ), sweater, raincoat and shirts.

It's fine and dandy to say you're going to implement a regulation saying you can only carry over 300 points from now on.  It's quite another to give first wind of the new regulation on 30 Mar (the day before the last day of the FY), but lock everyone out of their account until the rules are applied to your points balance on 1 Apr and all those points get flushed into the bit bucket.

If you haven't logged into Clothing Online lately, you're now greeted with this:

The points allotted to you through Clothing Online are the property of DND and are provided to you for the sole purpose of acquiring essential military clothing to perform your duties in support of the Canadian Forces and are not for personal use.

By clicking "I Agree" you recognize that all points belong to DND and that any items acquired with your points are for your professional duties and not for personal use.
​

Geez, did someone notice a severe rise in the number of people wearing the rubber overboots with civvies, or something?  :

Your post, I can agree with. I have no issues with the new "move to remove unused points at end FY". If people have points on balance, they obviously didn't need to replace everything in the way of DEU clothing that FY. Thus, they didn't require their points.

My issue is, as stated previously, that we were frozen OUT of our accounts without notice and a full day and a half before our points expired. The message, to me, is secondary - although it was cut after we had already been locked out - the "new policy" to take away our points was not the reason that I logged in order to "friviously spend them" in the first place.

I logged in on 30 March, as I do every year, to order my stuff. This year, on 30 March, I was forecasted to be posted to a dress-of-the-day DEU wearing Unit. Ergo, never having been posted to one of those places before, I wanted to take advantage of my points to order some extra shirts and pants ... which would certainly have been required at the new place of duty - being that I currently only have 2 X pants, 1 X skirt, 1 X tunic. The new place of duty would certainly require that I posess more of those as I'd be wearing them to work daily. I was unable to do so though --- being locked out.

Luckily for me, it looks like I'm now off to CFJSR ... not a DEU wearing Unit; I'm good with that.

You do not cut a message announcing a "new policy that will be effective 01 Apr 2010" after you have already locked people out of their accounts on the 30th March and effectively making the new policy effective even before the message was cut. That's NOT good-faith.

 

[PuckChaser]

Anyone else notice the shipping got worse? Up to 9 days now within Canada... I remember my last orders showed up in 2-3 days tops.

Also can't get PT gear anymore, have to use your environmental t-shirts, which you only get 5 a year. PT 5 days a week, plus a fresh shirt for combats that day means I either need 10 t-shirts, or I'm doing laundry every 2nd day. Its great these changes get carefully hidden after you log in, and never announced.

 

[armyvern]

Anyone else notice the shipping got worse? Up to 9 days now within Canada... I remember my last orders showed up in 2-3 days tops.

Also can't get PT gear anymore, have to use your environmental t-shirts, which you only get 5 a year. PT 5 days a week, plus a fresh shirt for combats that day means I either need 10 t-shirts, or I'm doing laundry every 2nd day. Its great these changes get carefully hidden after you log in, and never announced.

You're entitled to 5 t-shirts every year. Are you telling me that you actually wear out 5 t-shirts every year? That you only have 5 t-shirts??

As an aside: Logistik-Unicorp provides DEU uniform items for wear, not operational clothing. There seems to be some in this thread wondering why they can't get "op" clothing from them. Quite simply - they are not the manufacturer of those op items ... why would a civilian company want to stock and supply another suppliers items on their shelves (thus paying for the warehousing & overhead costs) to ship to the troops??

 

[SupersonicMax]

Also can't get PT gear anymore, have to use your environmental t-shirts, which you only get 5 a year. PT 5 days a week, plus a fresh shirt for combats that day means I either need 10 t-shirts, or I'm doing laundry every 2nd day. Its great these changes get carefully hidden after you log in, and never announced.

Do you really wear your PT gear when you do PT?!

You're entitled to 5 t-shirts every year. Are you telling me that you actually wear out 5 t-shirts every year? That you only have 5 t-shirts??

I don't know about him, but I sure do.  And they are always short on T-Shirts everything.

 

[armyvern]

Do you really wear your PT gear when you do PT?!

I don't know about him, but I sure do.  And they are always short on T-Shirts everything.

Well, that's because Air Force t-shirts are inferior to Army t-shirts.  >

Perhaps it's something to do with the anti-stat??  ???

 

[daftandbarmy]

I just used it to order some socks and should have a nice little package in the mail by this time next week. My account had 500 points in it, and there's no way I could use up another 500 this year on DEU stuff... unless I use my overcoat for breakdancing wear of course.

I think this system is the cat's derriere, and we should extend it to almost every other kind of clothing we use. But then again, I also think that the army pitched into a period of decline when we did away with puttees.  ;D

 

[armyvern]

I think this system is the cat's derriere, and we should extend it to almost every other kind of clothing we use. But then again, I also think that the army pitched into a period of decline when we did away with puttees.  ;D

Edward still has his on his docs; perhaps you can sweet talk him out of them?