Avoiding code read charge at the dealer?

The dealer will rarely if ever forego charging for anything. But if you know the code and it's a specific repair repair job like P0A93 Inverter Water Pump Failure, you'd just tell 'em that you're bringing it in for a new inverter water pump and there's no diagnostic charge, though they're of course going to confirm it before they do the work.

However if it's an error code that requires a more complex diagnosis you likely won't get around the charge.

In general a Toyota Stealership is the last place you'd want to take an old Gen2 Prius. They're warranty repair specialists who work on new cars and charge a fortune, not keep my old car on the road specialists who try to make the repairs affordable as possible.

How about you tell us what the error codes are so we can better help?

 

Hale no . This is the USA. They don't care what you say they're going to scan your car and get their codes because they said so and it's their shop is what it boils down to I even have friends at the Toyota dealership and if I even went there they would still say yes we have to scan the car with our blah blah blah just because that's how we get paid That's why I don't go there much I just bought tech stream straight from the dealer that went out of business and so now I have that I just don't get live updates on the network but now I have a friend in the parts department who can log on for me apparently apparently that will allow active online scanning and online updating but who needs that I have all the updates for all the cars through 2021 I think I'm covered for a few years

 

otoh, can you imagine what would happen if dealers started taking repair advice from their customers