Matt:
It's not clear from this thread whether you (or the dealer) did what Guest2018 suggested, which is to rotate the tires and thus either confirm or eliminate a tire as the source of the problem. Did you do that yet?
Also, what did the dealer do following his mechanic's ride in the vehicle in which he admitted to hearing a noise he wasn't familiar with?
The comments about how your car should not behave badly in the snow are accurate. I have lived the past 50 years in Canada and back in my mis-spent youth I did a lot of fairly competitive rally driving, almost all on snow-covered forest roads, and I have driven more miles than I care to remember on paved highways in winter conditions, so I believe I have a reasonably good idea of winter driving. I can assure you that the CX-9 is a capable vehicle in snowy and icy conditions. If it is trying to kill you there is clearly a problem with either the tires or your particular vehicle, not the CX-9 in general.
I can't believe somebody at your dealer hung up on you! But even so stay cool. You are much more likely to resolve the problem if you can stay on speaking terms.
Good luck. I am curious to find out what the end resolution is.
I was calling the dealer to ask them to rotate the tires and see if that solved it. As soon as he heard it might be the tires he told me it was my problem....
During the ride with the mechanic, he told me to expect it to take a while to fix - a week or longer anyways. I said that was fine so long as I could get a loaner (which my dealership offers). They had previously given me a 3 as a loaner, which is simply too small for me to fit myself and my kids in, so I said I would be happy to wait to schedule the appointment around their loaner car availability.
After that came the snowstorm, and when I lowered the PSI. After I saw the difference, that's when I called the dealer to try and have them rotate the tires before they spent tons and tons of time trying to fix it.
On the snow performance.... I don't know. I listed my driving experience and the cars that I have driven in the snow previously, so I won't belabor the point, but I have more than 20 years experience driving in New England snow.
I can tell you, without reservation, both the front wheel drive '09 Jetta TDI and my Honda Pilot were hands down better driving in the snow. Maybe it is only tires, maybe it is related to the specific driving conditions that I have had the Mazda in - it hasn't snowed since I dropped the pressure again. That being said, I've historically run tire pressure on the high side without any adverse wet/snow condition performance. The Dueler's are a 4 star tire on Tire Rack, so it's not like they are crap either.
Ok, maybe I'll belabor the point a bit.... In 85,000 miles in the TDI Jetta, 65,000 miles in a gas Jetta, and another 60,000 miles in the Honda Pilot I spun precisely once. I've already spun once in the Mazda (fortunately recovering it before hitting the guard rail) in less than 4,000 miles. I'm not saying that it's bad in the snow, I haven't driven it enough in the snow to say that definitively, but I don't know if it is the turbo kicking in, but I think some of the same characteristics that make it fun to drive in the dry make it a bit more twitchy in the snow than it might otherwise be.
Yelling's never really gotten me anywhere, so I'll keep trying to work with them
Appreciate your input and others, and I'll keep updating here as I know!