Navy Morale, Welfare, and Recreation (MWR) today announced it has provided grants of up to $10,000 to installations affected by the recent duplicate MWR charges.

The grants are to cover customer appreciation events and other initiatives such as free gear rental, meal specials, free fitness classes, and other MWR activities. Installations will determine the extent of offerings using the grant funds. There is no intent by the Navy to provide these rebates to those who were not affected by the computer problem.

In addition to MWR customer appreciation events, in the months of November and December, Navy Child and Youth Programs (CYP) will be providing impacted customers who were enrolled in full-day child care during the system glitch with a credit for one week of free care each month.

"We've been working diligently with the affected families to see that they are refunded for any duplicate charges and compensated for any financial issues that occurred as a result of the computer glitch," said Greg Young, Navy Child and Youth Program (CYP) director. "We are committed to providing the highest quality of child care for our military families; that includes accurate billing and we apologize for any hardship this may have caused our families," said Young.

A synchronization error during a hardware upgrade to MWR pay servers Sept. 24 resulted in duplicate charges, which affected military and civilian personnel and their families who made purchases or payments between January and June at MWR and CYP services at Naval Station Monterey, California, and Navy installations located in Guam, Japan, Korea and Singapore [see UPDATE: Hardware Updates Affect Some MWR Programs http://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=96949/].

Since the discovery of the duplicate charges, Bank of America, the Navy's debit and credit processor, has completed credits to individual accounts to correct the duplicate charge that may have occurred as a result of this error.

Those affected by the error who have additional questions are reminded to check the FAQs on the MWR website at http://www.navymwr.org/resources/Credit_Card_Duplicate_Postings/ and can contact MWR regarding this issue at mwr_creditcard_FAQ.fct@navy.mil or call 844.697.4357

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For more news from Commander, Navy Installations Command, visit http://www.navy.mil/.