Headlight problem

Windstrings, Time will tell if they are crap. The eBay seller, east_coast_hid offers a warranty, and the service life is supposed to be 3500 hours. Heck, even if it 25% of that... that's still longer than I used to get on halogens, and at a comparable price.

 

No Doubt.... this puts them down to Halogen price where they should be.

I can see paying a little pocket change for the ballast itself, but the bulb is very simple technology that once was rare and cutting edge but no more.

People are still trying to milk the market until "everybody" gets educated.

Its rarely about how expensive they are to make, its more about what the market will bear......

Thats why they want to know your zip code before they will tell you the internet price of an item!


Its fun to go shopping and try different zip codes just to see how it changes.

 

For the past year, the passenger headlight on my 2006 prius always turned on but then sometime during driving turned itself off. I could always fix it by turning the lights all the way off then back on again. More recently it would only stay on for about a minute before tuning itself on again. As I thought that it might have a wiring/computer problem I took it in to the dealership last week. They said it was a cracked bulb and replaced it to the tune of $250. Now it works great.... but now the driver's side light is acting up in the same way. I plan to buy a bulb and try to replace it myself this time.

 

Here is an email from the SF law firm.
Thank you for taking the time to contact our law firm about the litigation involving the HID Headlight System in Toyota Prius vehicles. We will be providing updates on the status of the class action litigation against Toyota periodically in emails such as this one.

We have spoken with many of you over the past weeks and months and wish to express our appreciation to you for taking the time to talk and to provide information. Please remember to save the original copies of all of your HID headlight-related receipts. You may need them in the future.

To date, our firm has filed two class action lawsuits against Toyota related to the 2006-2009 Prius vehicles equipped with high-intensity discharge (“HID”) headlights. As you may know, there have been many reports that the HID headlights sporadically turn off while the vehicles are being driven, causing Prius drivers to temporarily lose illumination from one or both headlights. The cost of repairing or replacing the HID headlight system parts can quickly run into the hundreds, and even thousands of dollars.

Federal Class Action Lawsuit

The federal class action lawsuit against Toyota seeks certification of a nationwide class on behalf of owners and lessees of 2006-2009 Prius vehicles. In the alternative, the lawsuit seeks certification of state-by-state classes. The case is pending in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York before Judge Sullivan.

The federal complaint alleges that Toyota has improperly concealed the defect in the Prius HID headlight systems from its customers, despite having known of its existence for some time.

California State Court Class Action Lawsuit

The California state court lawsuit against Toyota seeks certification of a California class on behalf of owners and lessees of 2006-2009 Prius vehicles. The lawsuit has been consolidated with several others and is pending before Judge Highberger in Superior Court in Los Angeles.

The California complaint alleges that Toyota violated California’s “Secret Warranty Law” by offering to pay for all or part of repairs to the Prius’s HID Headlight System, but only for customers who contacted Toyota’s customer assistance center to complain and who meet Toyota’s predetermined criteria.

What You Can Do To Help

There are two things everyone can do to help. First, keep us updated if anything new happens with your Prius’s HID headlights. Second, please save any documentation that you think may potentially be related to this litigation. We encourage you to let us know if you have information or documents that you think would be helpful to us in prosecuting this case.

If you own a 2006-2009 Toyota Prius with HID headlights and think you may be a member of the proposed class in either or both of the cases, you do not need to take any further action at this time. We will keep you informed via email of the status of the case and any substantive changes that may affect your claims.

If you have any questions about either case or if you have information you would like to share, please feel free to reply to this email or call (866) 981-4800.

Girard Gibbs LLP
601 California Street, Suite 1400
San Francisco, CA 94108
Phone; (415) 981-4800
Fax: (415) 981-4846
www.girardgibbs.com

 

Wow!.. its about time...... I was unaware of the “Secret Warranty Lawâ€.... that makes perfect sense.... keeps corporations from bribing and silencing the few to avoid costs going out to the masses to save a ton of money. The really crappy thing too is that its negotiable to the end.. all in the name of good will of course!.... 1. at first they never seem to offer to foot the bill unless the issue is pressed.. 2. second, they offer to pay a percentage to see if the customer will meet half way, 3. third, when they finally do decide to pay they claim they are doing it as a one time "good will " gesture and that where you are supposed to wet yourself because they are being so nice and making you feel special!..... This whole episode has knocked Toyota off the lofty pedestal I had them on... and I presently own "three" prius's.. if anybody should believe in them it should be me.

 

Hi guys and gals! Completely new and may not post here much aside from this thread. I'm actually posting on behalf of my mom, who owns a 2004 Prius (package unknown aside from Touring).

Wow. I spent most of last night reading this entire thread. Good info!

She started having these same problems about 9-10 months ago. It's really disheartening for me to see this model year excluded from a lot of discussions and possible legal action. What's really interesting to me is that her car only started showing these symptoms after 100,000 miles, but they are there nonetheless. Of course it was only one headlight or the other at first, but now I've been driving and riding with her while I'm visiting for the holidays and BOTH have gone out at the same time, numerous times.

I called Toyota and got a case number. The case manager (Paul, ext. 73807) said there was NOTHING they could do for her because of the mileage, which sits around 115,000 now. Luckily she hasn't even taken it in for diagnostics yet and hasn't spent any more money fixing the problem. eBay lights, here we come!

Shame on Toyota for failing to stand behind their products anymore, ESPECIALLY where the safety of their customers is at stake. I have a 1988 Toyota pickup that almost never needs maintenance and is solid as a rock. I can tell you that while I still consider Toyota to make a good product, I will never EVER consider buying their hybrid or electric cars/trucks with their customer service as it stands.

Cheers,
~Adam

 

Welcome Adam.. make sure you have HID bulbs that run with ballasts..... that far back you may have standard Halogen which only cost less than 10.00 a piece to replace.

Standard Halogen are expected to go bad every 2 - 3 years based on use and if you drive on during the day... but HID are the ones that people are complaining about as there are many failures around the 40K mark.

With 115K, your going to have trouble getting sympathy from Toyota in either case....

All else fails and if your running HID.. just do it yourself.. its really pretty easy and bulbs are cheap if you've read this thread you will know all the details.

 

Don't know if it will help the class action suit filed re the HID's but I sent Girard Gibbs, LLP copies of all of my letters with Toyota Customer Relations and Dublin Toyota. If nothing else it will be good background information for them. I will keep my fingers crossed that relief is granted for all HID affected owners.

 

I have a 2006 with 72,000 miles. One xenon headlight kept flickering out. I called the customer service 800 number as guided in the forum. It worked like a charm. They opened a case and directed me to go to my local dealer to have it diagnosed and repaired. I had to pay all expenses up front ($600+ dollars) and then got reimbursed about a month later.

To get the problem solved, took 2 trips to dealer. 1st trip they have to diagnose the problem (you need to go there with the headlight already out as they have to have "proof" of a problem). As part of the diagnosis, they switched the bulb from left to right... sure enough the problem followed the bulb - so they wrote me up the estimate to replace 1 bulb.

I was required to contact my customer service rep at Toyota Corp with the estimate to get authorization to do the work. At that time, I asked about both bulbs - and she immediately volunteered that they should replace both - and that Toyota would cover that.

Trip 2 - went in and had dealer replace both bulbs.... all works perfectly now.

Toyota reimbursed me for both the replacement and the diagnostic costs. I had purchased the car new in July '06... and when I made the call in October '09 I did indicate that the problem started in the spring of 09 (I don't know if that made a difference); however, there was no question I was out of warranty based on mileage.

In my opinion, Toyota did a great thing here... taking care of an expensive problem outside of the warranty terms.

Thanks folks in the forum (again!!) for the great insight... and thank you Toyota for a nice job.

 

I got the attached 2-page letter in the mail today. Looks like an official acknowledgment from Toyota of the problem. I will be taking advantage of this at my next service.

 

My 2005 had the problem, as did many others. I don't know why Toyota is excluding anyting before 2006.

 

Well, it's one man's opinion but I think the letter and their offer to pay the "difference" on lamps that are still 50% or more overpriced is not fair and still does not come to the table with the real problem. The letter is highly mis-leading when you consider most of my cars with regular headlamps do not have issues for at least 5 - 7 years of use. Whereas, these HIDs are toast in 2 years or less. The correct letter should have said that they admit the lamps are defective or they have a design issue and they are fixing it. Period. Bring in your car, we'll fix it and then have a nice life.

I like Toyota. I'll buy another Prius, but they are acting more like a Detriot company here than a quality Japanese manufacturer. That's my issue.

Steve

 

Just wondering--should the post about the class action have its own separate thread with a stickie?

 

Same problem here for my 2004 model year. I asked the dealer about it. He said he didn't know about the problem. He offered to keep the car for the morning and, at $90 an hour, try to find the problem. He said he wasn't sure they'd find anything.

 

Hello everyone. I was talking to a friend about my headlight problem when he did a google search and found that there were some problems that other prius owners have had.

This morning, the security guard for where I work stopped me and informed me that my driver's side headlight was out. This is the second time this week that a guard informed me of this, but today I checked before I started driving off to make sure that my headlight was on. I turned them off and turned them on again, and when I parked, I couldn't tell that anything was a problem.

Reading this forum is telling me that this is part of a much larger problem, and the response from Toyota is very disturbing. The Toyota response is that the best course of action is to replace the lamps. That would be a good solution if it turns out we're just getting lamps with a manufacturing defect.

But if it turns out, it's just a defective lamp, then I want hear that straight from Toyota. And I want to hear that they're looking into a different supplier for these lamps if the manufacturer doesn't start cleaning up its QC.

If it turns out that it's not a problem with the lamp, then I want to know where the problem lies. And if they don't know that, then I want to be given the option of replacing my HID lights with standard halogen lights.

There's too many unknowns here and I don't like it. I've had my '08 Prius for since December 1st, 2007. I've driven it 18k miles. This problem is unacceptable. I'm hoping that this is covered under my warranty, but I am not assured that I won't have to repeat this in another 2 years or 18,000 miles.

Additionally, I've known virtually nothing but Toyota cars since 1985. But given the response I've seen thus far from Toyota, who clearly realize that this is a problem, I'm disinclined to recommend them to others in the future. I could forgive them for the Engine sludge problem with the Camrys years ago. They admitted to the problem and came up with a fix (right?). I could even forgive them for the floor mat issue. They pretty much stated that they're not sure how to best fix it, but they at least came up with a cheap workaround i.e. don't use the floor mat. I was wary with the Tundra issues that cropped up, but right now, I don't like the looks of things with the Prius HID problem.

Tell me something I can do to fix the problem Toyota. Don't tell me to just replace it. I'm willing to spend a lot of money to get my car fixed, but I want some reassurance that it won't be a problem again for a very long time.

 

Most owners have solved the problem with new capsules. Likewise Toyota claims to have switched to a new capsule, which is supposed to fix the problem.

Tom

 

I just opened the same letter today - too bad Toyota doesn't have their act together - replacing all of those ECU's that were probably good is really wasteful. Note the letter also says "Please note that this coverage is for customer paid work performed at an authorized Toyota dealer only", and the limitation on bulb costs.

I plan to send in my paypal receipt for $75 for two bulbs I installed myself - just for fun and to see what, if anything, they respond with.......and folks are getting bulbs for $19.95.......

 

I have had HID problems with my 2006 Prius also. In Feb of 2008 my local Toyota dealership replaced the driver-side HID bulb under the 3 yr / 36K warranty. Now the passenger-side lamp is acting up. In both cases, the headlamp sometimes goes out, but comes back after cycling the lights, but sometimes it is noticeably dimmer than the other headlamp. There have been times driving at night when I thought things were a bit too dark, but driving in Seattle rain often gives that impression because the wet roads don't reflect much light, plus all of the streetlamps and other car headlights can make it difficult to judge how well your headlights are performing.

Anyway, I think the number of complaints may be much higher than indicated earlier on this thread. When I filed my complaint today with NTHSA, I had to select the "Exterior Lighting" category -- closest thing I could find for a headlamp problem. But when I went to check on the number of complaints for a 2006 Prius, I could choose "Exterior Lighting" or "Exterior Lighting: Headlights" component. The latter showed about 100 complaints, but the general category had about 500 complaints, and nearly all of them were headlamp related -- most of those indicated HID, a few didn't specify the type of headlamp.

 

I called Toyota's customer experience center and the guy said that since I have 75k miles that he cannot help with the headlight replacement cost. He did have on his records that I brought the car into a dealer around the time my warranty expired with the headlight issue.

After reading through this forum, seems like the best bet is to replace the lights with aftermarket lights. Can anybody tell me how difficult it is to replace myself and what the cost should approximately be?

Thanks

Baiju

 

Spoke with Robin at the Toyota Customer service experience today. I have a 2006 HID with about 51k miles.

They told me that now Toyota is only offering "reduced cost" bulbs for $150 and that I would have to pay for the entire labor amount out of pocket.

Why would Toyota completely cover the repair for many customers, and then ask other customers to essentially pay for the entire problem out of pocket? Seems discriminatory and unfair, if you ask me.