Sanitity Check On Retro Pay Computation...

[highoctane]

Ok...need a little sanity check.. my last day on active duty was 11/30/14. My effective date of disability is 1 Dec 14. I received my first regular payment 1 Apr 15( for March obviously). So by my math my retro should be 3 months..1 Jan 15 payment (for December), 1 Feb payment (for jan), 1 March payment(for feb.). The VA paid 2 months and after talking to 2 people they still seem confused because of the way the law is worded about the 1st of the month after disability...IMO that means that is the date you get paid...ie if disabled from 1 dec, you rate a payment 1 jan for December...but 2 people at VA ive talked to so far disagree(granted it was just phone answers). But when they finally let me fully explain all they will say is "DFAS" did the audit..and DFAS says we did the audit with the info VA provided(which was wrong)..

DFAS agrees with me but cant do anything because the VA put the effective date for the audit as 1 Jan 15..VA says that's just the way it works..so why does my rating decision have one effective date and my audit another?

Ok...so am I wrong..and if so what kind of sense does it make that we just don't get retro for the first month?

Final answer from VA was write a letter to us explaining what you think was done wrong...I'm talking to you on the phone and you can see my records and see what I'm talking about...but I have to write a letter??

Ok...rant over...I really wanted to think that the all the VA horror stories were just the fact that rarely anyone reports the good...but so far my claim has been a nightmare. It was done quickly...about 90 days..but everything has been screwed up...the 2 most serious contentions denied for no clinical diagnosis, they are all over my records that the has(DAV SO confirmed this)..3 of my 4 dependents names spelled wrong...and these are easy names to spell and were clearly written on the paperwork...now this retro thing. Even if "that is the way it is"...it makes no sense to me that we just don't get paid for a month. I know its only one month but its the principle...not the money. This whole process is so frustrating.

Ok...now seriously...rant over..

Thanks for listening. :)

[broncovet]

Yea...its that VA math, which is designed to hornswaggle Veterans. It hits us at almost every turn. Here are a few examples:

1. 100 percent for a married Veteran, is 3068, so 50% would be 1534 (half of 3068), right? Wrong. According to VA math half of 3068 is $917. Look at the charts. This hornswaggles 50 percent Veterans about $600 per month..every month..for the rest of their life.

2. 50% plus 50% is 100% right? Wrong. VA math would mean its 80%.

3. Probably the worst is the retro. If you got retro for 10 years, at 100%, you think you would get it at the current rate of 3068, right? Wrong. You get zero interest and get paid at the older, much less historical rates, creating an incentive for VA to delay our claims even more than what they do.