New to the Prius...question or two

Hello all. Here is my Prius story. My wife took a new job requiring her to drive 12o miles round-trip everyday. We casually starting looking for a used economical vehicle for her to drive and she ran across a 2004 Prius (no idea what package....it has factory fog lights) with 80K miles at a Chevrolet dealership where we've bought several vehicles and her uncle is the sales manager. We live in a small town where everyone just about knows everyone. An older gentleman, (aren't all trade ins by older people) that bought the car new decided to trade it in because the MFD had quit working. The dealership was not going to fix the MFD and was selling the car as-is. As-is is something that I don't let bother me usually and with this car, it had full service records from the Toyota dealership in the next town. In this case, the older gentleman part is true because I remember when he bought the car and I had seen him driving the car several times. I googled the MFD problem which led me here which led me to autobeyours.com. Long story short, after never giving a Prius a second thought, we ended up buying it for 7K on the road.

A little background on me....I've ALWAYS been a truck guy. If you had told me a year ago that I would own a Prius, I would have told you that you are nuts. If you had told me I would not only own one, but that I would also love it and try to figure out how to get it out of my wife's hands I would have said you need to be committed to an institution. This is our go-to car now when we go somewhere as a family and our other 2 vehicles sit in the garage.

Since buying the car, I sent the MFD to be fixed. It worked for almost 90 days and then quit again. Autobeyours.com said to send it back no questions asked and have since repaired it again and it's still working. I've also replaced the cabin filter and tires.

I got the recall on the inverter pump and decided that when I took the car to the dealership that I would ask for their records on the car to see when the 12v battery had been replaced. There was everything from windshield wipers to dome lamps on there but no battery. The service guy said the previous owner brought the car there for everything and if the battery had been replaced it would have been done there. The battery showed no problems but I decided to install the Optima that I read about on this site.

Now, while at the dealer, I asked them to change the oil, the transmission fluid and transaxle oil and they looked at me like I had asked them to give me a million dollars. They wouldn't let me talk to a tech, rather they were the go between he and I and he basically said I was misinformed about changing the fluids and it would be a waste of money. They would not perform the service. They did change the oil but over-filled it by 1/4 inch over the top indicator. I called them and they said not to worry, "it has a shut off if it's too full". Any confidence in them was killed at that point.

As far as the repaired screen, have any of you had any experience with these? Could I be looking at a failure at anytime or do they seem decently reliable?

The car has 94K on it and I would really like to change the fluids. Is this something a regular mechanic can do or is this one of those tricky things easily messed up? The next closest Toyota dealer is 2hrs away.

 

Thanks for the replies. In my perusing this site I had seen transaxle fluid and transmission fluid....hadn't thought about it being the same thing.

This site has been very helpful and to be honest, I probably wouldn't have bought the car had I not come here first and looked around for few hours.