Buying parts from a Dealer vs online store

The biggest difficulty is knowing whether the pump from eBay is going to be the same pump for half the price, or some $50 knockoff for four times the price.

There may be third-party suppliers selling aftermarket versions of a part openly under their own names, and there can also be third-party suppliers selling their own versions using copied Toyota packaging (that is, counterfeiting). Legitimate aftermarket selling and counterfeiting are both big business for auto parts.

You can also run into pumps sold under the name Aisin, the outfit that makes the pumps for Toyota. Those usually show up looking just like the Toyota pump, right down to where the Toyota logo would be, but ground off. That could be a good pump, though we might none of us know for sure how Aisin decides which of their pumps to sell to Toyota and which to grind the logo off of and sell elsewhere.

Also, when you buy from eBay or the like, the first question comes back again: is the eBay seller who advertises an Aisin pump really going to send you a pump Aisin made, or just one in copied Aisin packaging?

Some of the aftermarket pumps lack any thermal interface material between the power electronic parts and the heatsink, and who knows what other corners have been cut. They won't all necessarily work long enough to be worth the labor of putting them in.

 

can you get a decent price from an online toyota dealer?

 

You don't say which Gen. Prius you have, but several members here have installed this, including myself, (since this seems to be the common failure mode) Gen 3 Toyota Water Pump Rotor for sale | eBay with one member telling he has over 100,000 mi. on the replacement ......FWIW