Locate an Auto Repair Shop in Antwerp, Ohio

Antwerp, OH Car Consumer Discussions

Well, I am back (and trying to catch up)!

by fibber2 on Sun Aug 15 10:11:20 PDT 2004

We finished up the acceptance testing in The Netherlands early, and had some time to play. As I had mentioned, I was disappointed by downtown Eindhoven - too much of it looked like the style of "early '50 urban renewal", the unfortunate consequence of being trashed by a world war. I mentioned my quest for the 'real Europe' to my host's, and they had a great idea. So we jumped into a car (new Opal Vectra - quite nice...), and headed southeast to the town of Ghent (west of Antwerp), in Belgium. Unbelieveable city center! Like stepping back 500 years or so. Narrow cobblestone streets, a medieval castle and churches, beautiful architecture abounds. Dinner outside on the street - Flemish beer/beef stew, a big pot of steamed muscles, white beer. Evening temps around 75'F with a very slight breeze. A slice of heaven... The next morning we got up early and headed back to Amsterdam. Drove around the downtown - more square footage of canals than roads, with a stop at Anne Frank House before returning to the airport for the afternoon flight home. Oh, got upgraded to Business/First on Continental. Nice ending to a great week! Most places that we traveled had a great setup - roads for cars, red brick paths for cyclists, sidewalks for walkers. Subi count? Poor.... An older Legacy wagon, two Imprezas. Not a place with great brand penetration. Steve

Purchase from Garvey Hyundai

by pteal on Fri Aug 31 18:58:55 PDT 2007

Hello everyone! This post is long-winded, but I hope that it will be useful to some of you. I hope I’m keeping with the thread topic. After reading posts on this forum for the last week or so I decided to purchase a 2007 Santa Fe LTD AWD with no other options. I live in Albany, NY, and I started the process by requesting quotes from the online sites such as Edmunds.com and others. Right away I noticed that these sites were only in communication with two dealers in my area (Lia Hyundai and Fucillo Hyundai), with no option to get quotes from dealers slightly farther away. A few hours after submitting my RFQ, a salesperson at Fucillo contacted me to “set up an appointment.” I told him that I didn’t want to set up an appointment, and that I had requested a quote. He said that they don’t give quotes over the phone, so I decided not to deal with them at that point. Lia Hyundai never contacted me. Interestingly, I had seen posts on this forum that CarsDirect.com sold cars directly, so I filled out their quote request as well, only to find out that they contacted Fucillo on my behalf, and didn’t offer to sell me the car directly. I contacted the CarsDirect customer service via email and was told that I should have had the option to be contacted by a dealer, or buy the car directly from CarsDirect. They said that I must have missed the option. So I tried their website again and noticed that my popup blocker was blocking a popup on their site. I opened the popup and was presented with a different form that promised to offer an immediate price quote, so I filled it out. A few minutes later I got another email from CarsDirect stating that they had contacted Fucillo on my behalf. I never asked them to contact Fucillo, and I didn’t appreciate their deceptive (or downright incorrect) wording. Some people may have luck with them, but I’ll never use them again. Anyway, my next step was to email as many dealers within a 5 hour drive as possible to get OTD quotes (including the $1000, rebate, no other rebates, 8% sales tax, dealer fees, and NY registration). I didn’t care about MSRP, invoice prices, dealer fees, or anything like that because I just cared about the bottom line price. I said in my email that the dealer with the lowest OTD price would get my business. Most of the dealers responded within a few hours. When I filled out the form on Royal Hyundai of Oneonta’s website it threw a server error, so I tried sending them an email. That got bounced back to me as “undeliverable.” When I got home from work that day I called their sales line The operator took down my contact info and said that she would transfer me to a salesperson. After waiting on hold for a few minutes I heard a click and a dial tone. I waited for someone to call me back, but they never called. The next morning I called their sales manager and got his voicemail. I told him about the problems that I had contacting them, and asked him to give me a call. He never called either. Crazy! Maybe they are going out of business or something. When I received the quotes, the local dealer’s quotes were thousands higher than dealers such as FitzMall Towne, and Antwerpen. By the time I had looked them over, some dealers had emailed me to find out how they did compared to other dealers. After emailing them back and forth, the dealers within a couple of hours from me started lowering their prices closer to FitzMall Towne, and Antwerpen. In the end, I had 5 offers right around $27,000 OTD. I had so many numbers to deal with that I created an elaborate spreadsheet to manage the offers from dealers in different states. It looked something like this: Antwerp Price $24,871.00 Doc. (or other dealer fees) $695.00 Tax $2,045.28 NY Reg (plates) $200.00 Rebate $1,000.00 OTD Total $26,811.28 FitzMall Price $25,233.00 Doc. (or other dealer fees) $500.00 Tax $2,058.64 NY Reg (plates) $200.00 Rebate $1,000.00 OTD Total $26,991.64 Balise Price $26,689.00 Doc. (or other dealer fees) $290.00 Tax $2,158.32 NY Reg (plates) $94.00 Rebate $1,000.00 OTD Total $28,231.32 Towne Price $25,548.00 Doc. (or other dealer fees) $189.00 Tax $2,058.96 NY Reg (plates) $200.00 Rebate $1,000.00 OTD Total $26,995.96 After all of this, I still hadn’t received a quote from my closest dealer (Lia), so I set up a time to meet with the salesperson that took us on a test drive. Before our meeting I came up with the price that I was willing to pay for the Santa Fe - $27,200. Since I had 5 offers around $27,000, I thought that my offer of $200 over that was more than fair. I printed out my offers and brought my laptop with me. I also created a spreadsheet to calculate the OTD price from the base price, dealer fees, tax, registration, and rebate (in that order). This allowed me to easily verify everything during the negotiations without having to use a calculator. When I met with the salesperson at Lia, we test drove the vehicle that I was intending to buy and sat down to discuss pricing. I told him that I had researched the car and received many quotes from other dealers, and that I was willing to offer $200 over my other quotes. I offered him $27,200 OTD and told him that that was my final offer. The salesperson brought my offer to his sales manager, and about 15 minutes later they came back together and told me that my pricing was wrong, and that the price that I had offered was below their cost. I explained again that I had received detailed OTD quotes, and showed them my spreadsheet, and printouts of my emailed offers. The manager started to become agitated and told me that I had done more research that most people and that he wouldn’t argue with my quotes. He offered me the car at $27,684, and told me that it was as low as he would go. I stuck to my guns. At that point he switched tactics and asked me why his dealership should lower their cost to save me money. I responded by saying that they should do that because that’s how deals are made, and that I was unwilling to pay more. He said that I’d never get the car for $27,200, and that the other dealers were lying to me. I said that I had covered all my bases with the pricing and that I was confident that I could get that price elsewhere. The sales manager again asked me why they should lower their profit just to sell the car to me and I said that ‘08s have been in production for a month and a half, and that they should be clearing out their ’07 inventory. At that point the sales manager just got up and walked away. So I packed up my stuff, shook the salesperson’s hand, and walked out. On my way out the salesperson again said that the other quotes were bogus, and that the other dealers were lying. I said that if the other dealers are lying, that I’ll be back, otherwise I won’t. As soon as I left I emailed Garvey Hyundai, which was about 1.5 hours away. I told

EU probes planned subsidy to GM's Opel plant in Belgium

by rockylee on Wed Apr 26 15:05:05 PDT 2006

BRUSSELS, Belgium - The European Commission said Wednesday that it has opened an investigation into a planned 5.3 million euro ($6.6 million) subsidy grant intended for training workers at a General Motors Corp. car plant in Antwerp. The European Union head office said it has doubts the aid being given by the Belgian regional government in Flanders will be spent on training and said it could violate EU state aid rules. Under those rules, national or regional governments are not allowed to give support or operating aid to private companies if it distorts EU competition rules. All aid proposals have to be notified for review to the Commission by EU governments. "The Commission strongly supports training activities. However, there is a risk that this aid actually covers training costs that the company would have incurred anyway, even without aid," EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said in a statement. "We therefore have to check that the aid genuinely triggers additional training activities and not simply distorts competition." Belgium notified the EU Commission last December of its aid plan for the GM's Opel plant, which could face closure or shift cuts as part of restructuring of its European operations. Opel announced last year that it would cut 9,500 jobs in Germany alone. The company said in February that it could cut 1,000 more jobs across Europe because of slowing demand for its cars. Rocky

Re: I think it's limited to something like 104mph. [mazdafun]

by 11b33t on Sun Jun 26 08:12:40 PDT 2005

Wimpy new models! ;) I've had my 92 Pro running @ 135mph/220kph on the autobahn (Frankfurt to Ramstien AFB) and the autoroute Brussels to Antwerp, NL. Speeds in the States are mum (don't know if there's a statute on speeding and Smokies could be reading!

Erickpl

by seivwrig on Tue Sep 03 14:41:03 PDT 2002

Paul: I have wondered the smae thing. An ED board would be very informative. Especially since more people ask about it. I have wondered why Bimmerfest or Bimmer.org don't have ED boards. If I can convince my wife to do ED again in 2004, I would like to gain more info from others. I would probably do a drop off In Amsterdam or Antwerp the next time. London just did not, it was easier for me but it took my car longer to get across the pond. I would also carry touch up paint with me.

Re: dropoff cities? [tham]

by shipo on Sat Mar 05 19:42:35 PST 2005

Per the BMWUSA.com web site: Austria: - Vienna Belgium: - Antwerp England: - London France: - Nice - Paris (See note 1) Germany: - Bremerhaven - Cologne - Frankfurt - Hamburg - Munich - Sindelfingen (Stuttgart) Italy: (See note 2) - Bologna - Florence - Genoa - Milano - Naples - Rome - Venice - Verona Netherlands: - Amsterdam Spain: - Madrid Switzerland: - Geneva - Zurich Note 1: It is mandatory that the Paris Office be notified at least 4 days in advance of drop off. This can be done by email or phone. Note 2: Vehicle drop-off at the listed cities, must be arranged with E. H. Harms, Munich office at least 1 week prior to the intended drop-off. Once you drop off your vehicle, it will be driven to Munich (Germany) for truck transfer to port of departure. Car registration and insurance must be valid for at least 5 days after date of drop-off in Italy. Best Regards, Shipo