The dream house (9): The appliances

Apparently Serkan’s father had told him to go stay with Uncle and Auntie and to help them with the new house, only nobody told me; most certainly not my nephew. Once I realized he was supposed to be working, I did my duty and gave him many chores. Another time was the night we spent on the bathroom floor (Lütfü and I) and the pantry floor (Serkan) because the wood floors had to get another coat of varnish, and we somehow got painted in. I also remember a moment of total self-pity when I was cleaning three kilos of hamsı on the rough cement of the “terrace,” with nothing but cold water from the hose to clean my hands with, while the local sokak kedis yowled as they smelled all those lovely hamsı guts.

In spite of these and other domestic challenges, we managed to arrange to meet a friend of ours, İbrahim, who lived in Üsküdar, at an appliance store there. The bad news about using a friend’s friend to buy stuff is, if you aren’t satisfied you can’t say anything; they have either given you a cheap price, or it will cause distress to your friend, or both. The good news, which far outweighed the bad news for me, is that by using the friend of a friend, we didn’t have to do the usual price comparisons at 14 different stores, which my husband usually insists on. While I appreciate his fidelity to value, I get really sore feet after seven or eight hours, and I begin to hate tea. It was with some enthusiasm, then, that we went to meet our friend on the designated morning. İbrahim met us as planned, and we wove uphill into the complex warren of little streets and passages of Üsküdar, finally reaching a very modern looking showroom on the bottom floor of a very old apartment building. İbrahim was respectfully greeted by the staff, and we moved right to the tea stage, with very little chit-chat. I must say, our İbo is some friend; he sat there with us for the ensuing five hours, not saying much but supporting us all the way. I don’t know how he did it. Although it was our money we were spending on things that were going to increase our comfort immeasurably, I could hardly take it; he must have been bored witless.

A double discount

The main triumph that comes to mind from that endless day was the double discount on the stoves. Prior to our actual visit, my husband had done a covert price comparison just to be on the safe side. During his sortie, Lütfü discovered that there was a special from Siemens, the appliance brand our İbo’s friend would be selling us. If you bought a refrigerator or a washing machine, you got a very decent discount on a stove. While we were at the Üsküdar store, after spending an appropriate amount of time drinking tea and discussing our wish-list, Lütfü brought up the discount offered by the Gebze store. The sales team (yes, we had a team, of four men and one woman) looked pained, as if a bad smell had intruded on the party. After much buzzing around and some gentle questions from İbrahim, they made a phone call and ascertained that the special did, indeed, pertain to all designated Siemens products, not just those in Kocaeli. Leaving that alone, we proceeded to march through our life savings (the dollar was very weak then) in an orderly and thorough manner. First off, our neighbor Bob in California had made me promise I would not skimp on the size of my washer, and while Bob has never lived outside the U.S. of A., I usually take his advice; so we got the eight-kilo-capacity washing machine, along with a nice dryer. I was surprised when Lütfü didn’t mention the stove discount then, but I trusted his game plan, and kept silent about it. We looked at their refrigerators, and then walked two blocks to another store owned by the same people to look at another model, which I ultimately selected: tall, skinny and just right for our kitchen. Once again, Lute didn’t mention the discount! Next came the dishwasher, which went fairly fast because there weren’t as many models to choose from. The end of our list was, thankfully, getting close.

Eventually we discussed the stove. I wanted two ovens and a four-burner top like my mom used to have. The only one available, which would have to be ordered, cost about TL 5000. Not the price we had in mind and, as the head of the team was quick to tell us, there was no discount on it. The discount stove was very nice, but it only had one oven and a four-top. We left the oven arena for a while and discussed the need for a hooded vent. I thought it was a really unnecessary expense because my mom only had a grill over a hole in the ceiling connected to a vent duct, and it worked just fine. You’d have thought I had suggested an open barbeque grill in the bedroom; everyone -- İbo, Lütfü, the lady on the team, the men on the team, the tea boy -- were in total dismay that I would even consider such a primitive system. Did I WANT the house to smell like food? Did I WANT visiting friends and relatives to know what I had for dinner, simply by smelling the air? Finally realizing that I must have been raised by savages, I agreed to select a vent, and now things got interesting. We left the vent issue alone while we all took a break, Lute and I revisiting the stove issue. He had had an idea for some time, but it took me a while to catch up. We wanted two ovens; we like the discounted model, but it only had one oven; we both like to cook. So -- why not buy two stoves? From now on I had to leave it all to Lute, and that was fine with me.

My husband returned to the store and told the very surprised team we wanted two stoves and that we wanted the discount on both of them, one for the purchase of the washer and one for the refrigerator. Otherwise, we would buy our stoves elsewhere, and separately, and get both at discounts. The team politely but firmly refused, of course, not having wanted to give us the discount in the first place, not even on one stove. Undeterred, my hubby went on to say that if they gave us the double discount, we would of course have to buy the larger vent, which was about TL 700, compared to about TL 400 for the smaller. Otherwise, we would make do with no vent at all. All of this dialogue was non-threatening and polite, solemn even, but my husband was relentless, even though they did pull the female team member out front and center a few times, to work on me directly.

At the (literal) end of the day, we got our double discount, and they got our business. We got one final discount on the whole purchase, due to its size and for paying cash. All in all, we were very satisfied with our purchases, even though it took the rest of our life savings. It was a good experience, doing business with a friend of a friend. Of course, it helps having a husband with a sharp eye for a discount.