Youth center children play nine square in the air at Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Sept. 28, 2019. (Micaiah Anthony/U.S. Air Force)
KADENA AIR BASE, Okinawa — Air Force families with children in youth programs throughout the service, including more than 60 within the 18th Wing, were shocked this month by mistaken bank charges for hundreds of dollars.
The error was traced to an Air Force Services Center contractor who pushed a scheduled, routine update patch to the Child and Youth Management System on Nov. 30, Deborah Aragon, spokeswoman for the Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center, said by email Thursday.
As a result, extra charges were deducted from the accounts of about 4,000 families enrolled in Air Force children and youth programs, she said.
At Kadena, the error affected 64 of the 588 families enrolled in Child Development Center and School Age Care programs with monthly, bi-weekly and weekly automatic payments, Aragon wrote.
Those families on Dec. 1 were “inadvertently charged between $300 and $1,800 due to a system error,” according to a post Tuesday evening on Kadena’s official Facebook page.
The charges differed “based on a variety of care program situations,” Aragon said.
Kadena’s Child Development Center offers care for children ages 6 weeks to 5 years, according to the 18th Force Support Squadron website. The School Age Care program provides afterschool care to children ages 5 to 12 who attend Kadena elementary schools, and all-day care when school is not in session.
“Within 48 hours of notification, the [Air Force Services Center], working with installations and customers, had resolved about 95% of the erroneous fees and provided refunds to parents,” she wrote. “All refund actions for Pacific Air Forces families are complete.”
The youth program charges are unrelated to complaints that have surfaced on Kadena about fraudulent charges made to customers’ debit and credit cards after they shopped at on-base businesses, according to Kadena’s Facebook post.
Families who were erroneously charged are being contacted directly, and the money will be returned to their accounts within five business days. Anyone facing immediate financial concerns caused by these charges should call Youth and Family Programs at 315-632-7201 or 080-6489-8598, the post states.
“We are committed to resolving the situation as quickly as possible,” the post states.
The Air Force Services Center is working to also reimburse account overdraft fees that resulted from the charges, according to Aragon. However, none have been reported so far, she wrote.
