The woman of the house wears the financial pants in our family, and she does not miss a beat to save a buck. For instance, let me tell you what she did to avoid paying our local Mercedes dealer the normal slew of delivery charges, dealer prep fees, local and state taxes, destination processing fees, first tank of gas charge, and daily parking fees. Brittany (that is a fictitious name), ordered SMART for me, and she found a way to order him Factory Direct.
I was closely watching Brittany April last (2007), and I can honestly tell you now that she spent three weeks, nine days, thirty-two hours, and fifty-nine minutes surfing the Goggle International Yellow Pages for a way to purchase a SMART Car, and not have to pay more than $299 dollars in delivery fees. Bless her heart, she was ecstatic when she came across an internet company in Liechtenstein that specializes in shipping oversized packages to rich Americans. SMART qualified as the oversized package, I do not know how, but Brittany had to lie about being a rich American (She is married to me), but she got the job done. The company, OMATW, is run by a retired Swiss Army Special Forces Major, his American wife, and both of their mothers. OMATW is short for one man and three women.
Brittany wired Euros in the exact amount of the French Factory Showroom FOB, plus $299 to OMATW. They promised to make the SMART purchase avoiding any additional government fees and taxes because of their special government status as a, two mother-in-law burdened company.
On delivery the UPS Freight driver was great. He put the wheels back on SMART before he pulled the vehicle out of the truck, and even sprayed air freshener in the cabin area. Mercedes ships SMARTs without their wheels on in order to gain eight inches of height per vehicle. This enables them to stack SMARTS twenty seven cars high in the container ships, thus reducing UPS shipping fees. The wheels are stored for transit in the oversized cargo area of each car.
After I let Calvin take a quick spin in SMART he was off to his next stop, and I dashed into the house to write this story.
