Bought a Mazda3 in June expecting to get the satellite radio.  Dealer said
they'd have to outsource the installation.  Now three months later, they
still haven't figured out how to do it.

Their latest story is that they can't install the satellite radio without
disconnecting something else, either the "media" (MP3 player) port in the
center console or the steering wheel audio controls.  This seems strange to
me, since the dash controls for the radio have separate "SAT" and "MEDIA"
buttons.  I asked them whether they had any hard information from MazdaUSA
about how this installation should be handled, and they said no: They're
just winging it.

Call another dealer, they say that I can have everything, but only by having
a large "switching box" installed on the dashboard.  This box will, I guess,
somehow split the input path from the media port to be shared with the sat
radio.  But I'll still use the separate dash buttons, they say, rather than
anything in or with the box.  This tidy bit of surgery will cost more than
$700.

What the hell?  When I researched this model, all of the information
indicated that it was "satellite ready" and that getting the radio installed
as a dealer option was no more complicated than, say, an auto-dimming
mirror.  Now it turns out that no one knows how to do this installation
without ripping everything apart and charging a mint.  Have I just not found
the right dealer?  Or does Mazda sell this "satellite ready" model without
any real plan for how a radio might actually be installed?