the dealer acted very unethically. i would feel sick if i ever heard about any dealer i was affiliated with doing something like this...
with that being said, they are there to sell cars. they managed to sell this lady a car. and since they only have her side of things (a side which obviously has some issues with communication), i can't totally blame them for it. i've had many service customers come up irate at some minor service issue and talk about trading it in... i'll go over their options, but once the customer sees any kind of crazy numbers or payments, they say, no thanks, i'll just fix it.... and i say, good idea. if i ever had one say, ok, let's do that... i'll say alright, let me get you coffee while i do up the paperwork and show you all the numbers. who am i to tell someone NOT to buy a car?
... don't think that's what happened here... but just saying it could happen.
also, she obviously had bought a car under a year earlier... probably at that particular dealer. so it couldn't be totally new to her.