[mbeardsley]

Yeah, it was you guys...I was trying to order an early '08, so it would have been late-May of '07.

I had several emails with your internet sales lady (don't remember her name). And after assuring me that there wouldn't be any add-ons, I went down to order the car.

At that point the sales manager got involved, and insisted that I had to buy about $3200 worth of extras (stuff like paint protection, road hazard insurance, and 24-hour towing service). He kept saying that all the dealers had to do this "just to stay in business".

At one point I even said, "How about instead of me buying all this stuff, you just tell me how much profit you expect to gain from that stuff and we add that to the price of the car?"

He then claimed that it would be about $3000 in profit. At that point I just bailed.

In general, my Sky shopping experience was quite frustrating. Previously, I had tried to get a test drive at the Plano dealership, and was told "Well...we don't let just anyone test drive a Sky."

It really seemed that the Saturn dealerships were going out of their way to avoid selling me a car (I guess you can get away with that when you've got a high-demand vehicle).

Eventually, I was able to order a car from Hurst without any hassles. I just wish that the Hurst dealership wasn't so far away from me.