This post submitted by shadow
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Ok, so when I arrived Korea I was well aware of the rationing IAW the SOFA, however, when I went into the Osan shoppette the other day, the cashier scanned my cared for 3 50ml bottles of vodka. You know, the little bottles you get on the airlines. This is the first time thats been done since they've instituted the "credit card" ration system over here. Anyway, I asked the cashier how many units that would reflect on my ration...she didn't know. So, will I be charged 3 units of alcohol for purchasing 3 50,l bottles of booze? WTF at least in Germany you could tell by the check marks on your card. When I went to the USFK site for ration control, it displayed the exact amout I spent in grocerys at the commissary, but the alcohol portion of the stie was not available; meaning that the site could not show the data. WTF... you give me a card with a magnetic stip on the back and you can't show me whats been purchased???? In Germany the could show you based on your paper product card. Granted, its not the best way to manage things, but when my info is being scanned into some AAFES owned computer and I can't see whats going on then theres a problem. Perhaps I should "turn" Korean over here and shop till my hearts content and pass through the korean cashiers................thats another story.

This post submitted by Adam Shutt -
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I went to my local helpful AAFES store on July 18th, in Germany, to get some men's swimwear. I can't find any so I ask the sales associate where it is. He informs me that they are all sold out. I was stunned, and asked him if he realized that it was the middle of July, in the middle of summer heat, and he could only tell me that "That stuff sold really fast, and that "They were stocking stuff for fall now". Unbelievable. Again AAFES does'nt have the forward thinking to stock more than can be bought out in a couple weeks. Thanks AAFES, I bent over and you got me again!

It doesn't stop, and never will. From S & S


SEOUL — Two South Korean AAFES employees were ordered to pay a total of more than $1.3 million in fines after being found guilty last month of a massive black-marketing scheme.

Yu Jung-yeol was sentenced June 7 to 24 months in prison and was ordered to pay more than 678 million won — about $750,000. Yu Gwang-ok was sentenced the same day to 18 months in prison, suspended for three years. He must pay the court more than 618 million won — about $683,000. Seoul District Court officials, who confirmed the sentences Wednesday, said both men worked for the Army and Air Force Exchange Service at Camp Market. They said the men are appealing the sentences. The case came to light in late March, when South Korean police announced they were investigating 18 people, including two Americans from the base and two South Korean AAFES workers. Police said the group moved about 25,000 cases of beer and about 633 tons of expired food products from the AAFES shelves into the off-base black market. Officials have said that one of the AAFES employees made more than $2 million on sales and evaded tariffs after he began selling food in 2004 and beer in 2005. The AAFES employees manipulated the inventory tracking system by falsifying documents to show the goods had been disposed of properly, officials have told Stars and Stripes. On Wednesday, Seoul court officials were unable to provide specifics as to the charges on which the AAFES employees were found guilty and would say only that they involved violations of South Korea’s waste disposal and customs laws. Korean National Police officials who’ve worked the case could not be reached Wednesday. AAFES officials were unable to comment Wednesday afternoon. - Surprise! :)

This post submitted by Jim -
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For all of us here in South Korea, the DTH decoder box is available for AAFES to dig into your pockets while you are here. I tried to purchase the DTH decoder here and was told the only way to obtain the service was to rent the DTH decoder (at that time for $25.00 a month but has recently dropped to $13.00 a month).

Well, let's see, the decoder cost $279.00 to buy and I could have purchased the decoder through AAFES but not here in Korea. I'm retired Air Force and a contractor and have been in Korea for 12 years. Now, the thing that really gets me is that the decoder is purchased by aafes customers every place except Korea and Japan. I finally got fed up with aafes answers, all the way up to the aafes IG and I found a different avenue to obtain a DTH decoder. It was so crazy, AAFES was saying it was AFN not allowing the sale, then it was USFK stopping sale, then it was ration control stopping the sales. I didn't know when it would stop.

Friends are a fantastic thing to have, especially when they can walk into a BX/PX in Europe and purchase 4 DTH decoder boxes at one time without any questions.. So, if you have friends and want a decoder, use those services...

[Read more...]

From: Give AAFES some competition

After a recent trip to the post exchange, I decided it was time to offer my ideas to the rest of the military community that uses PX services.

The Army and Air Force Exchange Service has long touted the huge benefit that it provides to soldiers and family members. As one takes a closer look, the actual benefit is quite small.

We live in a capitalistic society. This translates into competition among providers of goods and services, which, in turn, causes prices to fall. This is the basis of our economy. This, however, does not exist in the AAFES world. There is no competition on post. All businesses are run by AAFES. If a new business wants to open on post (a daunting task, at best) it must agree to be run by AAFES. Prices, employees, goods, services — all AAFES. This does not bode well for the military consumer.

At a stateside assignment, this problem is easily resolved by traveling usually just a mile or two off post to the large variety of discount stores that offer prices much cheaper than any AAFES establishment. For those overseas, we are forced to use on-post facilities and pay prices far higher than your local Wal-Mart.

One can order online and save a lot, if he is able to find a supplier that will ship to an Army post office box. This process, however, is long and time-consuming.

The time has come [to bring some] competition to the AAFES monopoly. Only when other establishments not run by AAFES are allowed to operate on post will we enjoy the benefits of capitalism.

Hmm … I wonder if Wal-Mart will read this

Spc. Christopher M. Meyering

Vilseck, Germany

Employees allegedly part of operation that resold beer outside Camp Long
From S&S
SEOUL — One man is in custody and three more face charges in connection with a black-marketing operation that was being run out of an Army and Air Force Exchange Service store at Camp Long, near Wonju, South Korea, authorities said Wednesday.
The case was a result of a yearlong investigation and involved more than 21,000 cases of beer from AAFES, according to Kim Jong-mu, a Seoul-based South Korean customs officer who is the case’s senior investigator.
The duty-free beer was driven off base in a U.S. government vehicle and sold to middlemen, who in turn resold it on the South Korean market, he said.
The four suspects in the case were AAFES employees, he said.
AAFES-Pacific spokesman Master Sgt. Donovan K. Potter said, “all employees involved in this case have been terminated or are on enforced leave, pending disciplinary action.”
One suspect, Cheon Bong-Jung, was arrested Sunday on suspicion of violating South Korean customs law, Kim Jong-mu said. He added that another suspect, Kim Jong-hyuk, who was the store manager, is hospitalized and is expected to be arrested later this week upon his release.
The other two suspects, whose names were unavailable, have not been arrested and are thought to have played lesser roles of loading the beer onto the government vehicle, Kim Jong-mu said.
None of the four have been charged formally, he said, adding that South Korean police are planning to forward charges to the prosecutor’s office.
Customs officers also are seeking a middleman who left one of their fellow officers injured on Nov. 10, Kim said. The officer, Yang Cheon-ho, was dragged by the suspect’s car for about 100 yards as the suspect drove off to escape an attempt to arrest him, Kim said.
The officer remains hospitalized in Seoul with broken bones and head injuries.
U.S. Forces Korea spokesman David Oten said the investigation is ongoing and details could not be confirmed as of late Wednesday.
According to Kim, U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command agents asked South Korean customs officials to help them in the joint investigation.
He said Army investigators last year became suspicious of illegal activity at the Camp Long store after determining the amount of beer being ordered for the store was excessive compared to other peninsula AAFES outlets.
The 21,300 cases of beer believed to have been smuggled over the past year was valued at 700 million won, or about $750,000. Kim said investigators believe the suspects have been involved in black marketing for many years.
The Camp Long smuggling was done by loading cases into a vehicle with USFK plates and driving the beer to a middleman waiting off base in an identical vehicle with South Korean license plates, Kim said. Then the plates were switched and the beer was delivered to liquor merchants in Seoul’s Namdaemun Market, he said.
AAFES in the past year has used a new computer software tracking system to help determine when excessive amounts of goods are being sold at its South Korea stores, an indication of possible black marketing.
Kim said the system is working effectively at stores on larger bases.
“Now we are hoping that their new software system tracking … would be applied to the smaller camps for a quick implementation,” he said. “That’s very helpful to prevent the black marketing still occurring at the smaller U.S. military bases.”

Amazing. And yet the military continues to harass young soldiers and civilians as if the black market economy is being supplied a case of beer at a time, walking out of the gate, or in the trunk of a POV. Why it takes years rather than weeks or months to detect anomalous sales and inventory patterns are beyond me. Both USFK and AAFES takes a hit on incidents like these.

MWR will get a much needed shot in the arm this month! from: Stripes



Overseas adjustments won’t come until October

By Matt Millham, Stars and Stripes

European edition, Sunday, September 17, 2006

Matt Millham / S&S

David McClure, a civilian who works for the 3rd Corps Support Command in Wiesbaden, Germany, fills up his Lincoln Aviator at the Army and Air Force Exchange Service gas station in Darmstadt on Friday.

Don’t expect a drop in the price of gas purchased through AAFES before the next monthly price change.

Despite the growing gap between the Army and Air Force Exchange Service’s fuel prices in Europe and the U.S. national average, “… there are no approved plans to further adjust [overseas] pump prices mid-month,” Judd Anstey, an AAFES spokesman, told Stars and Stripes late Friday in an e-mail response to questions.

Motorists in the U.S. were paying 54 cents less than AAFES customers in Germany on Sept. 11, the last day the Department of Energy compiled its weekly stateside gasoline price average. That was the biggest price disparity in at least two years.

Rather than lower fuel prices now, AAFES is expected to account for the U.S. price drop when it resets its monthly gas price for October.

U.S. prices haven’t slid so low so quickly since they dropped almost 80 cents a gallon between last October and December after hurricanes Katrina and Rita. That slide resulted in a difference of 52 cents per gallon for AAFES customers over the U.S. average in November 2005.

In September 2005, AAFES’ price was 26.8 cents lower than the U.S. average for regular in Germany. This was the biggest gap in favor of drivers in Germany in at least two years.

AAFES also sells fuel in the U.K., the Netherlands, Turkey and the Azores. In Italy, fuel is purchased from certain Italian service stations through tax-free coupons issued by the Navy, which sets its own monthly rates.

While prices in the U.S. continue to fall, AAFES’ prices have not because the exchange service’s pricing formula doesn’t take trends in the States into account until the following month, AAFES officials have said previously.

That means there should be some relief in October, but it is not clear how much. AAFES calculates its price by averaging U.S. prices from the last week of one month and all but the last week of the next, then adds what it calls an “incremental dispensing cost.”

For instance, to get September’s price, AAFES averaged the price from the last week of July with the prices from the first three weeks of August and added more than 16 cents — its “incremental dispensing cost” — to every grade of fuel.

Because AAFES’ prices reflect past prices in the States, they can’t be directly compared to what motorists pay in the U.S. But it is not difficult to figure out the differences between the two.

Vinny Newsome, who works for Army Morale, Welfare and Recreation in Darmstadt, Germany, put 9.2 gallons of super-unleaded gas in his 1986 Toyota 4-Runner at the AAFES station in Darmstadt on Friday. He paid $30 for the fill-up.

In the States, the same tank of would cost him an average of $4.80 less.