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My dealer and Toyota still will not pick up any labor to replace the defective headlight assemblies which the extended warranty will not cover. Having replaced the HID bulbs that died just out of warranty they claim "they have done enough for me." So, to fix clearly defective parts I will be out $300+

I hope you reported the HID problem to http://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/ivoq/. Maybe the government will force a recall. If so, you'll get your money back.

I did log my complaint. Everyone else should do so. At this point our problems are considered minor because no one had died or had a serious injury and not everyone with a problem has registered their complaint. I also signed up for this website: http://www.mycarstats.com/safetystation.asp it provides updates when others post complaints.

The government doesn't have to wait for someone to die or get injured to require a recall. The more people who complain, the better. Losing headlights is certainly a safety issue.

Did they only replace the bulbs, or did they also replace the controllers?

I am ending up paying for the labor for bulb replacement, but it is only one hour. This is because the extended warrantee covered the controller replacement labor and parts, which requires removal of the headlamp assembly, making the extra labor for bulb replacement almost trivial.

On the other hand, the labor to replace the bulbs only is several hours. What did they do in your case?

They repaced the bulbs under the "customer loyalty program." They picked up the labor because I had been waiting 3 weeks for one replacement bulb when the second bulb died at night during my 30 mile commute home.

When I picked up the car after the bulb replacement I realized that the headlights were flickering and they did not properly shift from low to high and back. I was told the "shutter" in the headlight assemblies (both sides) were bad and the whole assembly needed to be replaced. Totoya will cover parts buy not portion of the labor. The dealer will not pick up the labor or cut a deal even though the dealer will be paid MSRP for the parts by Toyota.

Will they hand you the parts and let YOU install the assemblies? It is not hard, and does not require special tools.

I have a 2006 Prius and am having the same problem. The drivers side headlight has been blinking and turning off. When the dealer said it was $300-400 to replace, I requested they change the bulb from one side to the other to make sure it was the bulb.

After the swap, the passenger headlight started blinking and turning off. That's pretty good evidence to me that it really is a faulty bulb.

I called Toyota customer service. They took my information and story and promised to call back within 24 hours after reviewing the case. I'm slightly past my 36,000 mile mark and Toyota extended care does not cover the bulbs.

Toyota also requested that people who are having the problem call Toyota at 800-331-4331 (option 5) to report the problem. Otherwise, they don't know it's happening and cannot remedy the problem. Simply posting in an online forum does not help.

I suggest everyone call. It only took a few minutes. They were very polite.

My check from Toyota arrived today. So out of about $2200 I ended up paying about $150. This is for both bulbs and both ECUs. The extended warranty covered the ECU parts cost, and the majority of the labor, and Toyota paid for the bulb parts cost. All I ended up paying was the delta labor to change the bulbs while the assembly was already out to replace the ECU. They didn't refund some tax on the parts, an oversight, but I am not complaining.

For those who face the same problem, ask your dealer to write up the order such that the ECU replacement covers all the labor (buymper cover removal, headlight assembly removal, ECU removal, re-aiming), and the bulbs are just an hour or so add-on to that estimate. This way, the extended warranty covers almost all the labor.

In other words, don't write it the other way around-- that the bulbs are replaced with full labor, then the ECU is tacked on for a little extra labor. The latter method will cost you more, since the extended warranty covers all but the bulbs (and bulb labor). This applies to those with the extended warranty only.

When you talk to Toyota have that receipt faxed to them, and make sure the breakdown is clearly readable. I mentioned that I considered this a QUALITY problem and that I expected Toyota to stand by its designs. The Q-word was used a lot. No guarantees, but this worked for me.

To follow up, Toyota customer service did call me back and said they will reimburse the cost of the one bad headlight bulb even though I'm just past 36,000 miles.

Ok i am on the wagon with you guys. 06 prius. started about 45000. warranty was out and I did not get an extended warranty cause toyo has pretty good rep for being reliable. cheapo me.
my quoted cost was $729+ tax to replace two headlights. No way was I going to pay that. I was flabbergasted. so much for saving on gas. dealer said they haven;t heard of this happening b4. yeah right. made the complaint to the NHTSA site. ATTENTION: I am asking that everyone who reads this post and has this problem make the complaint to the NHTSA site. I want my car fixed!!

I was going to buy some bulbs on my own and replace but after reading everything here, since that is not a 100% solution, I am not even going to do that.

I hope when the bulbs decide to one of these times, a cop ain;t coming the other way and sees me performing reckless acts and writes me a ticket.

going to call toyo next working day and start my complaint with them.

at least I don't feel alone anymore

Add me to the list of 2006 owners with HID issues. Mine started maybe a month ago around the 45000 mile mark. I've had the driver side light fail on me 4 or 5 times now. Is there a confirmed fix for this yet?

Also, I don't have an extended warranty so it would seem that I'm going to have to pay a hefty price to avoid crashing into things at night. I've got an appointment at my local dealer to bring my car in and I've given them the case #'s in this thread. I guess we'll see what happens from there.

Left the car at the dealer this morning and also called the Toyota Experience Center just to further document my issue. The guy at the TEC wants to wait for the dealer to come back with a problem report. I gave him the case #'s posted in this thread although he didn't seem too interested in the 50+ NHTSA reports I found on the issue (I've already made one myself).

Now I just have to wait for my dealer to tell me what they've told all you guys already. Hopefully it won't be too much of a run around to properly fix this.

I dunno. The "confirmed fix" worked for me, but didn't work for others. Longo Toyota, per Toyota Corporate Customer Care was told they had to replace both ECUs, wiring, and both HID headlights. This was around 50-55K when it got done, with my issues starting at 45K. I am now at 72.5K and haven't had issues.

Funny though, that it seems a lot of us had it start around 45K. For me the car was only 1y 3m old...

My 2007 HID headlights began failing independently at about 30,000 miles of 'always on' operation (slight flicker, then off after ~20 minutes of on time), and work fine now after replacing only the bulbs.

My impression is that Toyota introduced a promising new technology before refining it for longevity. Hopefully, it is a matter of adjusting the bulb gas mixture or pressure for optimum performance. Time for Toyota to behave honorably toward their commitment to quality and reliability.

UPDATE EDIT...
The first failure was actually 34,000 miles - just before the 36,000 mile warranty ran out.

Now at 68,000 miles, the symptom has returned.

I did the math, and can report with some accuracy because I burn the headlights constantly and have a long, consistent commute: The symptom began at 750 hours of burn time; the bulbs were replaced and burned for 750 more hours before winking off. In technical jargon, that's 750 hours MTBF (mean time between failure).

Further, if the fault is with the electronics module rather than the bulb, replacing the bulb simply masked the true source of the problem, and replacement of the electronics module (and bulb, if it was damaged by the faulty module) could arguably be covered under my original standard warranty.

As I mentioned elsewhere, it is important to watch carefully for the symptom (as there is no 'lamp failure' icon in the dash), and to have both lamps (and/or electronics modules) replaced prior to the 36,000 mile standard warranty expiration.