I've edited a few more photo albums. My mom threw a baby shower for our good friend Christie Smith. We had such a great time catching up with people we have been friends with for 20 years. Click here for the photos. Next are a variety of photos I took during all of our Christmas celebrations from Atlanta to Dalton to Dallas, Georgia. Click here for those photos.
On Friday Kyle had an article published in both the US and European editions of the WSJ about our experience in buying a car in Belgium. I've copied and pasted it below.
BY KYLE WINGFIELD
Friday, February 23, 2007
BRUSSELS--Do you hate car shopping? Despise those pesky, aggressive salesmen who hound you the moment you set foot on the lot? Wish you could just browse through a selection of vehicles without being bothered? Well, has Brussels got a deal for you!
It's not uncommon for Americans in Europe to experience culture shock when they go shopping. Store hours tend to be much shorter. Salespeople are often so reserved that an innocent abroad could be forgiven for thinking that they would prefer not to make a sale. After two years here, I understood this all too well. But surely, I thought, those hardest of hard-sellers, the kings of cha-ching--car salesmen--would be different. Understand that I come from a family that loves to go car shopping. My father reads the colorful sale Sale SALE! automotive ads in the paper whether he needs a new ride or not. We're not really the sort of folks who will swing by a dealership just to test-drive some new model we're not going to buy. But if there's a free hot dog involved, we just might. Let me assure you, there are no free hot dogs awaiting potential car customers in Brussels. Nor waffles. There might be salesmen--if you're lucky.
My wife and I were not that fortunate when--having decided to give up our complete reliance on public transportation--we visited our local Volkswagen lot one Saturday. We overheard a man taking sandwich orders from some of the employees and then watched him leave just moments after we and another couple had walked in the door. One of the sandwich-orderers was helping another couple; the other spent the next half-hour chatting away with either a schmooze-thirsty client or his best friend. Another couple walked in the door shortly after us, and then a fourth. Apparently, we were all rendered invisible upon walking inside.
We chalked up that experience to bad timing and proceeded to a Toyota shop. A friend of ours had bought a minivan from this dealer before and assured us that we'd find a friendly salesman to help us. When we found him, Laurent was indeed friendly. He was also about to clock out. My suspicion that salesmen here didn't work on commission only grew. He passed us off to a co-worker who also seemed friendly--a little too friendly. Smarmy, even. He tried to up-sell us to a larger, more expensive model. This was more like it. I felt a shot of adrenaline as I warmed up for the negotiations. I wondered what sort of price I could throw out there and not be laughed out of the place.
The price on the sticker, it turns out. "You mean there's no room for negotiation?" I asked. He shrugged, giving me the kind of look you'd expect from a cashier at Wal-Mart if you tried to haggle over the price of chewing gum. "We have already taken off the standard discount," he responded flatly. (No sale there; though I asked him to fax me a quote on the cost of leasing a particular vehicle. I'm only mildly surprised that the quote never came.)
What was going on? According to Bernard Lycke, secretary-general of a Belgian automobile dealers' group called GDA, some Belgian car salesmen receive extra pay if they hit annual sales targets but others don't. Perhaps I simply ran into the unincentivized--or maybe these guys had already hit (or given up on hitting) their targets. Another possible complication: Because so many expats live in Brussels, about half of its cars are either rentals or company cars. That means dealers here depend on poor saps like me--who actually have to go look for, and pay for, their own wheels--for a relatively small portion of their business.
Still undeterred, we headed to a Citroën dealer. No one rushed to help us, but by this point we were used to that. After circling, scanning, opening, poking, crawling around and sitting in one particularly appealing car for about 20 minutes--without, apparently, attracting the attention of a salesperson--we decided this might be the one. The only way to know for sure was to test-drive it.
When we found an employee and asked to take the car for a spin, his eyes bugged and a gust of breath buzzed through his lips: "I do not think it is possible." What did he mean? It seems that the car did not have license plates on it, so we'd have to make an appointment to give the dealership time to rustle up a set before it would be street legal. You'd think that car dealerships might have gotten together with the Belgian government to find a solution to this problem in--oh, I don't know--the first 100 years that people have been driving (and, presumably, buying) automobiles. Mais non.
At this point, it seemed self-defeating to refuse to do business simply on the principle that one ought to be able to show up at a dealership and test-drive a car. We made the required appointment and, when the time came, were afforded a leisurely excursion to try it out. We decided to take it. (Maybe the Belgians know what they're doing after all.) Best of all, since we were buying a vehicle already in stock, rather than ordering one as most people have to do, we wouldn't need to wait months for the car to be built and shipped.
But even here came the unexpected: We could not drive off with the car until we had the license plates in hand, a process that would take about a week, according to the salesman. Who, with the deal completed, suddenly became the most friendly person we've ever met. Our business already won, he was all smiles, even willing to vouchsafe his cellphone number and offer his help should anything come up. Maybe I'll give him a call one day and ask if they're going to be giving away hot dogs anytime soon.
Mr. Wingfield is an editorial page writer at The Wall Street Journal Europe.
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