Action line #80707- Self help store

  • Published
  • By Anonymous
  • 39th Air Base Wing Public Affairs
INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey --  Complaint:

I am writing to express my concern with the Self Help stores policy. On Friday, I tried to check out one weed eater at 1630. I was then told that I couldn't check out the weed eater until the next day. According to Mr. Covington, the weed eaters are only available for same day checkout, meaning, I couldn't check out a weed eater at 1630 Friday afternoon and return it Saturday morning. This brings a lot of frustration to myself and I'm sure other Self Help patrons. With the recent dilemma with the gardeners, the BX not having any weed eaters to purchase, and me still needing to be in accordance with the housing regulations, I thought the Self Help would be a little lenient on their policy.

With my work schedule being Monday thru Friday 0730-1630, the only day I can check out a weed eater is on Saturday according to Mr. Covington. When I went back in on Saturday, the four weed eaters had already been checked out. At this point, my frustration was over the top. Is there any way for the Self Help to be more customer service friendly while Team Incirlik goes through this transition with the gardeners and until the BX gets some weed eaters in? Thank you in advance for your help.

Response: 

The Incirlik community is undergoing significant changes requiring everyone to rethink how we conduct business and manage our households. You are absolutely correct in that family housing residents are still required to comply with housing regulations despite the lack of gardeners. The Self Help Store is a valuable asset our community can use to offset the expense of purchasing personal lawn care equipment. However, our ability to serve the community does have some limits.

The response you received from our Self Help Store manager was framed to maximize the availability of the 10 lawnmowers and 4 weed eaters to the entire Incirlik community. The intent behind requiring that the lawn care equipment be turned in by the end of the day was to ensure the equipment would be ready for checkout at the beginning of the next business day. By the way, the Self Help Store hours are 0800-1700 Monday through Friday, and 0800-1200, 1300-1600 on Saturday.

Based on your questions, we are modifying our policy to better help you and the rest of the Incirlik community by augmenting our daily checkouts with an evening checkout period. Self Help patrons can now check out available weed eaters and lawnmowers after 1500 for overnight use. The equipment will be due back to the Self Help Store no later than 0900 the next business day. Patrons checking out equipment before 1500 will still return the items the same day. The key to this process is ensuring our patrons return the equipment to the Self Help Store as soon as possible.

Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention as we continue to iron out changes in our Incirlik community lifestyle. We do understand that this is a delicate issue but we hope our new policy will benefit all housing occupants.