18.  On the afternoon of 3/27/97, just before my husband and I began a road trip to Cincinnati, the SES light came on.  We immediately brought it to Saturn of Branford.  They were about to give us a rental car, but they told us the problem was found.  We were told it was just a loose wire.  We asked specifically if this car was okay to go on a long trip.  Howard, the service manager said "Yes.  Enjoy your trip."  Unfortunately, this turned out to not be the case.

19.  On the afternoon of 3/28/97, a couple of hours into Ohio, the car no longer started at all.  The car was towed to Saturn of Mansfield, Ohio.  What we found out there was appalling.  They found several non-standard repairs.  Several wires at the PCM had been cut and spliced back together with a butt connector, but not sealed.  All the wires at a  six way connector at the coil module had been cut and repaired, some with unsealed butt connectors and others with black tape.  The six way connector had been replaced with an incorrect colored wiring harness and incorrect connector.  The wires that were taped together did not correspond in color from one side of the tape to the other.  In addition, all wires were out of the loons under the hood, and there were unknown conditions where the wires had been taped together.  The service people at Saturn of Mansfield called Howard at Saturn of Branford; he was anything but cooperative.  He told us we could have the car towed home to Connecticut on a flat bed (at our expense) and they could try to fix it.  However, we obviously did not trust their work after finding the non-standard repairs.  He would not take responsibility for any of the non-standard repairs, even though it was very obvious that either his shop had done the repairs, or had left them every time they had the car since we first brought it to them three months earlier.  Since it was Easter weekend, there was not much anyone could do for us until the following Monday.  We rented a car and continued on our trip, but we had to also get a hotel room for Sunday night, since we could not return to Connecticut, as we had planned, without our car.  One point I must make about the people at Saturn of Mansfield- they were very understanding and helped us where they could.  They were the first Saturn dealership which had acted like they portray on the commercials.  On Monday, Sherry from Mansfield, along with Chuck from Saturn of  North Olmsted, Ohio, Rae Dahlia  (CAMS) , and Howard from Saturn of Branford worked out how we could have our car fixed.  We were towed to North Olmsted, Ohio to have our car examined and possibly fixed.

20.  When we arrived at North Olmsted, Chuck, the service manager, went beyond our expectations (especially since we had never been treated as well by any other dealership).  He gave us a hotel room and dinner money; however, most importantly, he found the problem that had been causing all of the recent problems.  There was a corroded wire which was receiving too much voltage.  This was intermittently causing the car to not start or run smoothly.  We were told that this wire had actually been like this since we received the car from Saturn of Hartford in 1995.  Chuck also replaced the damaged wire harness.  Rae Dahlia said she would give the improperly repaired harness to our CAMS representative in order to use it as a learning tool.  We hoped this would be the final end to the continuous problems with this car.  It was not.

21.  On 4/15/97, at  79,346 miles, the SES light came on.  Since I no longer trusted any of the dealerships I had been to thus far, I decided to try Saturn of Fairfield.  They checked the car and told me that there was a code 23 (the same code that was reset by Saturn of Branford on 1/23/97) which meant I had no third gear.  They removed and replaced the valve body and gasket of the transmission.  It is anyone's guess how long this problem had been present.

22.  On 5/17/97, while getting my oil changed, I was told that my transmission was leaking.  I called Saturn of Fairfield to make an appointment, and with some reluctance they said to come in the next morning and they would "try to fit me in."  Despite just having the gasket replaced a month ago, I was told the gasket had gone bad and was tightened.  The filter was also replaced yet again.  When I tried to get some explanation of why this happened, the mechanic who worked on the car was not helpful, basically saying "it just happened."  No one had been so uncooperative since Howard from Branford  when we called him from Ohio to tell him the car that he had told us was fine, was not going any further.

23.  That afternoon, I called a Saturn customer service number given to me by Vid (the service manager at Fairfield) on 4/15/97.  I talked to a representative named Joe Srouji, chronicling my entire history to date.  He told me to "work with the dealer on a case by case basis".  This was the same dealer I had just told him I did not trust.

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