Eagle Cash blows

I managed to get my watch fixed.  Can you believe that our PX actually had the right watch battery in stock?  Such an obscure item, and it was actually on the shelves, unlike such things as USB Sticks or socks.  Had to pay with my new fangled Eagle Cash card since finance won’t actually give you any cash anymore. 

The idea of the Eagle Cash card sounds good on paper.  A secured card you load with funds from your bank account.  You can use it like a debit card throughout Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, etc.  It keeps you from loosing your cash, and supposedly helps keep Joes from being separated from their hard earned cash.  Its also supposed to lighten the load on finance offices, banks, etc and reduce the amount of US currency over here.  When you re-deploy, you just dump the money back in your account.  No transaction fees or anything.

In reality, it makes everything here a pain in the butt!  This economy runs on a cash only system.  The vendors on post (barber, “mall”, etc) are all independent vendors.  Most are Turkish or Iraqi, and they do business in cash – not Eagle Cash.  Theoretically, I can go to finance and get real cash fort such things when needed.  In reality, finance is never open when we have time off from our patrol schedule.  Like most fobbits, they run on banker’s hours and are closed on Sunday. That leaves getting cash back at the PX.  The problem with this is, 1) You have to buy something to get cash back, and 2) They never have any cash to give!  So You are still out of luck getting your hands on your own funds.  At the very least you ave to spend your money to get any money.

So basically, I have this piece of plastic I can’t use (except in AAFES sponsored locations), and no access to cash for such things as haircuts.  The DoD should have left well enough alone, or at least made Eagle Cash an option.