Living in the 3rd World - Right Here in Western Europe!

WARNING - this is not going to be a cheery, up-beat post. No, this is what the French might call a Poste d'Anger.
We are not happy campers. If I wanted to live in a 3rd World country, I would not have chosen to spend 4 years in Belgium. I would have thought you'd have to be about 1000 miles east or south of here to experience the kind of things that happen all too often around here.
In a nutshell: the Belgians seem incapable of getting much right and are absolutely incapable of getting anything right the first time...or in one day. You see it everywhere, as our Belgian landlords will attest, but here are 3 simple examples from our own experiences, all quite recent.
1) I got an inexpensive watch for Christmas and need to have the metal wristband shortened. How long would this take in the States? How difficult would it be? Answers: 5 minutes; not at all. Belgian answer: at least a week and it may not be possible at all! This was the response I got at an upscale jewelry store this afternoon. Why a week or more? Hey, it's Belgium. Why maybe impossible? The woman in the store told me that they have to use fire for this intricate process, and if the band is not silver, it may not be possible at all. Say what? Fire to remove a couple of links? Where are we living - in Bedrock, next door to the Flintstones?
2) Car repairs. Just typing those 2 words makes me angry. My Mazda wouldn't start a couple of mornings ago. We quickly ruled out the battery, as it's new. I had the car towed to a Mazda garage where it has now been for 2 full working days. The diagnosis at the close of business today was the same as yesterday: "We can't get the car to start, so we're contacting Mazda Intnl. We think it might be the spark plugs." That's exactly where we were 16 working hours ago. Just how long does it take to remove and test plugs? Evidently at least 3 days. Lucie's Hyundai went in for minor brake work today; she had been told earlier that this was simple, no problem. Never, ever believe these words if they come from a Belgian mouth. At the close of the work day they called to tell her the generic part they had won't fit and now they will need to check with a Hyundai dealer. It took them 8 hours to come to this astonishing conclusion. There is a Hyundai place all of 5 miles from the brake place. Why didn't they recognize the problem in under 8 hours and get it solved? Only Karnak the Magnificent would know. So, Lucie now needs to bum a ride to a train station, take two trains and I will then pick her up at the local station. Tomorrow she will take a duty shuttle, getting her to work 2 hours late. Welcome to Belgium.
3) Taxes - try as we may, we can't seem to convince the local government that we are not liable for paying Belgian income tax. Each year we get a nasty-gram in French, telling us we are late with our taxes. And every year, via the U.S. Embassy, we explain that we are U.S. citizens working for the U.S. government, paid in U.S. dollars, etc., etc. But they never seem to grasp this rocket-science-level concept. I guess the authorities must have felt guilty this latest go-round: they sent Lucie what amounts to a refund check of nearly $700 - for taxes never paid in the first place.
Did we cash the check? No way! I figure that somewhere in this western European 3rd World nation they must get something right the first time, possibly, and my huge fear is that it might be arresting foreigners trying to cash refund checks they're not entitled to.
Now, should we get another of these checks, say, a month or two before we leave in summer 2012, well, all bets are off.