Headlight problem

Aaron--it would be helpful to me if you would post the name of the case manager, in case i ever need to call Toyota with a problem again. I would want to avoid this person, for the reasons you give. To me, there are two issues, as you said. One is the problem with the car. Toyota can either help me with it or not. But the other issue is, if they don't want to help me with it, i would like to feel that the person telling me that they can't/won't due to their policy, would sound as if they wished they could help me and understand my position. Then, if they still won't help, at least i don't feel blown off and disrespected by the company's representative at the same time. It just makes a bad thing worse, for me.

I'm curious, when the Toyota rep told you to go have the repair done and then submit the bill for reimbursement, why you didn't ask them to just pay for the repair upfront and eliminate all the unnecessary paperwork and intermediate steps, since they are going to reimburse you anyway (according to the first representative). Was it before you read these threads? After reading these threads, i learned that a lot of people have had the repair covered by Toyota at the time of service. I had already paid to have the repair done before i read the threads and they did reimburse me, and the rep was OK, but if i have this or any other similar problem again, i plan to contact Toyota and ask for the repair to be covered, now that i'm more informed. Also, next time anything like this happens, i plan to speak to the facility service manager and tell them about the threads on the subject, the multiple reports and that it's a known problem which needs to be covered by Toyota, and tell the manager outright that i want them to go to bat for me as their customer and contact Toyota to get approval to cover the repair under my extended warranty (or good will gesture or whatever). In these threads i've learned that often, the dealers will just cover the cost. I don't care who does it, just so it's not me.

One other question--i'm pretty sure, from a couple of conversations i had on the phone with Toyota during this episode, that they do document their contacts with the customer, so it seems that it might be useful to ask for them to look up and see who spoke to you on whatever date/time that was who told you to have the repair done and it would be covered. Tell them you would like to speak to that person in order to clarify this misunderstanding. tell that first person you talked to that something got lost in the translation when another case manager took over and they are now saying they won't cover all of it, but this other person had told you to have the repair done and they'd take care of it and you need for them to clarify that so that you will get what was promised. Ask if they documented that conversation when you were told to have the repair done at Toyota's expense. If they told you to have the repair done at their expense, it should be documented.

You can also ask the dealer to cover the labor as a good will gesture, telling them what happened, that Toyota told you they would cover it, then changed case managers and said they wouldn't cover the labor after all, after you had had the work done on the say so of the first case manager, and that this was upsetting for you, you are getting a bad feeling about this company, but you would like feel better about it and would appreciate if they would cover it.

I mean, they are telling you that you should cover part of the cost of a repair that should not be needed in the first place, it's a known problem, it's widely reported to the safety board. it's not normal wear and tear. It's not like you are being unreasonable. In fact, you would appreciate an apology.

 

The case manager's name is Lisette. Interestingly, if you google "Toyota case manager Lisette", the first result (and only really relevant one) is a 4Runner owner who also had a less than satisfactory experience.

I had asked the first representative that, and they said that since the dealer is independent and the warranty arm of the company wasn't going to reimburse the dealer, that this was the only way. I had read some of these threads, but hadn't come across any problem with people getting reimbursed. Also, I trusted what they were saying. Had I known that some other arrangement was possible, or had I known that the company wasn't trustworthy, I would have certainly pushed for something different.

I asked Lisette specifically to do this. They know exactly who it was I spoke to and when. She said in no uncertain terms that she would make no effort to connect me to this person or even tell me who it was that I initially spoke to. I'll be making a followup call in the next week or so to try to address this again, and I'll try once again to talk to the first rep.

I'd be reluctant to do this. I feel like now that the repair has happened, they wouldn't really have any more leverage with Toyota than I would. If they did refund the labor cost to me, I'd guess that would have to come out of their own pocket at this time. I generally like the dealer, but I have my car serviced elsewhere, and haven't paid them a dime since I bought the car, so I can't see why they'd have any incentive to dip into their own pocket to help me. Plus, they already charged me $0 for the initial diagnostic, and much less for the labor than what other people have reported here.

The apology would be nice, but I'd settle for the money.

 

My 2006 Prius (HID) had the one light off (both driver and passenger sides) for the past several months. Watched the NTHSA let Toyota off on the headlight problem, but at least they are going to 'fix' my floormat and gas pedal (I have never had that problem though!!).

As my car has over 100k miles, I have just been dealing with it (cycling lights when Iknow it happens) - however, two days ago BOTH lights went out while driving at night. That got my attention. Yesterday the wife had BOTH lights go out when driving at night - so now the Prius is a daytime ONLY CAR - maybe they should include that in their 2010 marketing!

I just ordered (ebay) a set of D4R bulbs and will change them out when they arrive (hopefully this week).

Question for you all - (I did read the first 140 posts and skipped to the end) - anybody post on potential cold solder joints on the HID ECU? I have had the problem on my corvette and by just reflowing joints it fixed it. Wonder if possible problem in ECU re these HID lights???

 

My wifes 2006 (65k miles) Prius experience fwiw:

Both headlights were turning off intermittently. Service told my wife that the issue was bulb wear and was not covered. Service did not mention that this is a well known ongoing issue.

I found this and other forums documenting this defect and we went back to the dealer service department fully informed. And let them know it. A customer service person at the dealer then e-mailed her local Toyota rep and several days later we were told that all material and labor costs would be picked up by Toyota. We never needed to call Toyota ourselves.

While it is fortunate that we were covered, it is unfortunate that Toyota is not in front of this issue and seems to have no consistent policy with how to deal with it. If I had not done my homework I think there could well have been another, unpleasant end result.

 

Welcome to the forum!..... you hit the nail on the head.... I suppose they figure its far cheaper to deal with the squeaky wheels one on one than releasing a recall and attracting media attention and untold thousands of endless claims.... literally every time a bulb ever went out in the future, their admission of guilt as to there being a problem would cause them to have to fix it. Seems like they could put a mileage limit and reap tons of good will from the public by saying they will cover issues up to 75K miles sounds reasonable for a HID bulb.... thats only about 3 years in my car!

As with many things.. sometimes you pick the lesser of two evils.. I guess this is they way they are handling it because its obvious they know about it now.

I would venture to say unless something happens to where the "lesser of two evils" is to fix the problem, it will never happen.

That means someone has to be big enough to hold their feet to the fire. Without a collective organized effort, I don't see that happening as with their financial power, they are like a lion that can overpower a single water buffalo who tries to wage war.

 

Hi Everyone.

Of course, this problem happened to me last month. First the right and then quickly both. The NTSB finding that they can't happen together is non-sense. But what else to expect from a gov't agency focussed on industry, not consumers.

My advice is to just order the bulbs for $65 on ebay and put them in yourself, if you are handy. For me, taking the bumper off and removing the headlamp assemblies was WAY better than trying to kluge it. It took about 2 hours and I cut myself once, but I had a tetnus shot so all is well . Getting the black covers off was really hard so having the lamp assy on the bench where I could see was the most obvious advantage. I'm back on the road and the lights work fine so far.

A big thanks to all of you that have documented this repair. I used your videos and notes! :rockon:

Cheers
Steve

 

The NTSB did not find that they can't happen together. The NTSB finding states that the headlights fail independently. This means there is no one common point of failure. Instead, two independent failures must occur for both lights to go out. The problem is that the bulb failures are time related. If you wait too long to replace a failing bulb, the likelihood of the other one also failing increases. While not directly related, the two failure points are linked by age and hours on the bulbs.

Tom

 

My hands are medium sized.. it would be hard if you have big hands.. but i put on some cheap cotton gardening gloves. to give me more power and prevent cuts from digging my hand around... once you actually go to put the bulb in or remove it from the clips.. I didn't use gloves as i needed my sense of feel.

 

You should be able to do better than $65 on eBay. I'm very satisfied with the $19.95 pair w/free shipping I found on eBay. The service live is supposed to be 3500 hours. Changing them out took 45 minutes using the bumper cover removal method.

 

Wow!.. thats more like it!... can you provide a link?

It sounds like we are all in the wrong business... we need to start selling HID lights!

 

WOW - great find for $ 19.95 - I just bought mine on ebay Nov 29 and lowest price I could find was $75! Please provide a link for others......

I installed my D4R's yesterday w/o removing bumper cover and all is well for now.

 

Yea... are the 19.95 crap or is the markup really that much?... lets see.. that means each bulb cost less than 10.00... then wholesale must be less than that!

We need a link to that so we can at least scrutinize it to make sure things look legit.

 

Our baby is at the dealership currently for this same intermittent headlight problem. Found the problem with the rear lights, apparently it was just a bad bulb. Replaced both and everything there is fine.

Front lights are now the issue, with passenger side light winking out every time I drive it and the driver's side also starting to do the same. Hubby has the car usually and he is currently assigned (for his job) to the Bakersfield office. I can tell you, driving back on the Grapevine with the headlights winking out without warning is NO FUN.

Of course, the initial word from the dealer is that they cannot recreate the problem. I don't know why...it happens all the time to me. But they're claiming no problem at all, and will most assuredly charge me the $95 diagnostic charge because it benefits them to do so.

 

Take a picture of it with one light off while your on the side of the road somewhere and take them a few pages of documentation of the problem and mention how many cases have already been reviewed as a known problem and adjusted by Toyota.

If that doesn't work, call Toyota yourself and get approval to fix it.


As far as the rear lights. those are just simple bulbs that go bad from time to time... the HID bulbs in front are big bucks from Toyota and are supposed to outlast a typical Halogen bulb by 8 - 10 times.... hence some of the reason for the high cost.

 

This IS a real Prius problem. I have the same vehicle and frequent headlight problems, complicated by the fact that on 2 of 3 occasions the bulbs were actually good! The Service Mgr at my "adopted" dealership told me that the issue was with the "balancer" and that some headlights would stop working (and start again) based on an incompatibility with the balancer.

The last incident was 3 mos. after my 36/36 expired and (faced with the expensive "bumper off" fix) and at the suggestion of the Service Mgr. I called Toyota CS and was later contacted by the department that handles customer "accommodations". The rep told me that Toyota would credit me for half the cost. The Service Mgr. said that wasn't good enough and fixed the problem N/C.

Toyota needs to do the right thing: a free warranty extension. In my case almost ALL of the exterior lights have blown once (parking, tail light). I've never seen this in 40+ years of vehicle ownership. That said, the Prius is a great car. This kind of thing just tarnishes the marque.

 

wow!..never heard of a "balancer" before..... sure he didnt' mean a "ballast"?

Funny How Toyota goes from not covering at all, to half, to full... seems they don't want to do more than what you are willing to hold their feet to the fire for.

 

Good point! I double-checked just now and got a somewhat different story: The BULB was bad ("flickering") and that was why it was working intermittently. The dealership has apparently seen this a number of times before and that was why they ignored Toyota's "50/50" offer and addressed the issue themselves.

Yea, it's "funny". As someone who has set up CS operations for 2 mid-size companies I can tell you that a policy like this is NOT customer-facing and WILL cost Toyota in the long run. Quality control issues are one thing. Failure to properly/promptly address them? Deadly.

Moral here: A good dealership will cover your back -- in my case, Toyota of Hackensack (NJ, on the off chance there actually IS another Hackensack)...

 

Welcome to the forum Chuck... your fortunate....
I think many dealers try to get Toyota to cover "and" the customer to pay so they get paid twice!....
No, I don't have proof.. just heard enough of these stories that I have a strong hunch.

Seems many of the corporate rules have changed from years past.
Its a jungle now and jungle laws prevail.....
Once upon a time companies took care of their customers and the customers reciprocated with loyalty.

While the cycle has been broken, in the smaller towns those principals of old still try to exist because if increased accountability as everybody knows everybody.

In the large cities, no one is loyal to anybody and its all about the best deal and the motto is to not worry about customer service because customers are not loyal back anyway but are fickle and follow the latest deceptive ad which tells them what they want to hear.

Image is more important than reality.

While Toyota has a strong reputation of substance, I fear some young blood is taking over and starting to throw out good sound principals that make companies great.

No matter how corrupt and crazy it gets, people are still people and they will gravitate to who and what they trust.
Even a dog and farm animals know who feeds them!

No one blames Toyota for miscalculating HID performance with the parts they chose, but this problem has gone on strong for 4 years uncorrected and rather than man up to the problem they have chosen to evade attention and only do what will avoid a lawsuit and attention.

Like I said on one previous post... I see "very little" honest good will.
Its more like.... if its good for me.. I will!

 

Thanks, Alan. Well said....

 

Sorry for the delay... the 19.95 HID's came from eBay seller east_coast_hid I am very pleased with them. The seller was very fast, in PA, I got them within a couple of days.