P0AA6 -- 526 and 613 codes 600 miles after Transaxle Fluid Replacement

I was once the proud owner of a 2006 Prius with 106,716 miles on it. Never missed a regularly scheduled service. Now, I am no longer proud, but just another owner of a Prius with a failed transaxle.

Last week, I parked my car on my way to work and, while the car was idling in park, the Triangle of Death (red with exlamation mark within) came up on the dashboard. The car went into limp mode -- it was unable to shift into drive or reverse -- so I had it towed to Darcars in Silver Spring, MD. They thought the original 12v battery was dead, so they replaced it.

I picked it up the next day and drove it to my home with a normal dashboard with no deadly triangle warning. After 25 miles or so and only 5 blocks from my house, the Triangle of Death showed up again! So, I just drove it to Russel Toyota near Baltimore, MD. Unfortunately, they told me that I will have to pay $5,000 to have the transaxle replaced. The error codes were P0AA9 with 526 and 613. I spoke to Toyota Customer Experience and they gave me a case number, but they told me they could not provide me any goodwill assistance. Bummer. I presume it was because of the number of miles I have on my car.

I will try to email Toyota, write letters, etc., in further attempts to get some goodwill assistance for me, a long time Toyota customer who took good care of my Prius. Spending $5k on a car with a Blue Book value of $11k is painful. I know the powertrain warranty ran out at 60k. Any other ideas out there on how to convince Toyota they should provide some assistance, even though my car has more than 100k miles on it?

Now, I've seen a few posts on here that advise replacing the transaxle fluid at 60k or even more frequently than that. Some have postulated that shavings in the fluid may cause shorting out and the P0AA6. I did not, unfortunately, have my fluid changed at that 60k mileage. However, Russel did the transmission drain and fill service at my last regularly scheduled service at 106,118 miles on 12/28. Sorry, I did not have the old fluid saved for testing. So, my guess is, based on the copied and pasted post from Luscious Garage, is that my transaxle failure is the following:

While there are other potential causes of P0AA6, the most common by far is winding deterioration in the traction motor​

Perhaps the loss of viscosity in the old fluid hastened the detioration. Any thoughts?

 

Well, I acquired a portion of the old fluid. Who can I send it to for testing?