Household Goods

Evaluation of Department of Defense Claims Payment and Recovery Activities Gao ID: NSIAD-89-67 February 24, 1989

In response to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Defense's (DOD) and the military services' procedures for resolving claims for damaged or lost household goods, focusing on whether DOD claims: (1) payments to service members were excessive; and (2) settlement was effective and efficient.

GAO reviewed claims payments data at 11 military installations, and found that: (1) the payments were reasonable and in accordance with claims regulations and procedures; (2) although the average military claims settlement value was higher than for commercial shipments, it was not an indication that military payments were overly generous; (3) temporary storage of military shipments prior to delivery and the potential for loss or damages accounted for the differences in the average settlements; (4) although claims payments were usually reasonable and timely, the services encountered difficulties in recovering claims from liable carriers; (5) 4 of the 11 installations that GAO reviewed had carrier claims backlogs, but the Air Force had successfully recovered a higher percentage of funds from carriers; and (6) the statutory 2-year filing period for household goods claims and DOD failure to use claims data to measure carrier performance contributed to claims management and adjudication problems.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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