Am I getting scammed by dealer on warranty issue?

My 2012 Prius v, breaks down 150 miles after getting it serviced by 1 dealer, with an inverter failure which a second dealer says is under warranty, but they come up with $500 of charges they say aren’t covered under warranty. And I get no loaner car for the 6 days I wait for parts and repair.

My Prius v has an inverter failure and goes into a limp mode, with gas engine providing about 20% power and no electric motor. I immediately get the diagnostic code pulled from an auto parts store and they give me one code, the inverter.

I drive it in this limp mode about 50 miles total, but drive slowly and I creep up some hills at 8pmh, bc the engine has no power. I am far from dealer who serviced it, so I go to second dealer, which is the only dealer in the area. This dealer says the inverter is under warranty, but they say there are 2 codes pulled, a second one misfire related which isn’t covered. Inverter diagnostic code is covered by warranty so I don’t have to pay the $150 diagnostic fee but the other code they say they got isn’t so I have to pay a diagnostic fee, $150 for this. They said something valve or cylinder related needs to be done and spark plugs changed so total will be $500. They also won’t provide a loaner car while I’m without a car for 6 days as they wait for parts and to fix it. They said they could provide me with a discounted rental car from a local rent a car but at my expense. I think the $500 in charges were from $150 diagnostic fee, and $350 for change of spark plugs and something like a valve or cylinder adjustment.

Here are my questions.
1) if there was a misfire would the basic service 150 miles before have picked this up?
2) would Napa know when pulling codes if there was more than one code?
3) could this misfire have occurred while I was driving in limp mode as they engine struggled, and after I had gotten Napa do pull the codes?
4) is there anything I can do like have the dealer show me the second code? I also don’t want to piss them off bc there is no other dealer close by at all. They have monopoly in the area.
5) to me it seems this misfire / cylinder or value problem occurred bc of the inverter failure as another dealer had just said my car was fine. Can I prove this is because of the warranty problem?
6) Any suggestions on what to do?
7) Am I getting scammed?

Car has 85k miles on it.

 

More details to the story are I had the car serviced in California just before shipping it to Maui. On the drive to the boat is when this problem occurred. Now it’s on Maui so another dealer isn’t an option for at least 6 months.

 

the second item they said, the one not under warranty, is that one of the coils or springs is starting to fail. Not sure if that’s critical to get done right away or why it never came up at my recent service.

 

The second item they said, the one not under warranty, is that one of the coils or springs is starting to fail. Not sure if that’s critical to get done right away or why it never came up at my recent service.

 

Sorry, the coil / spring was me just trying to remember what they said. It is the coil that goes with each cylinder. They said one was starting to fail which is why I had the misfire. They also recommended changing spark plugs. But as I stated before, the engine light had never come until the inverter failed. This makes me think that either this occurred when the engine was in limp mode after inverter failure or the dealer made this one up to generate revenue. I did have to creep up a hill when the car was in the low horsepower, gas only mode. Maybe it happened then?

Frodoz737, can they legitimately say that more work was required than just pulling the code in order to figure out why the car misfired? Can they say that in order to justify why they are charging a second diagnostic fee (with first one covered by warranty) ?

 

Now I really don’t understand things. I got my car back and got some more info, but I’m confused. I chose not to replace the ignition coil on cylinder 2 and the spark plugs for $500. They didn’t replace the full inverter, but parts of it which were under warranty. (Cost would have been $2000, not the $4000 to replace). They did charge me a $150 diagnostic fee for the alleged misfire code they say they got. (Recall, I had the car serviced a few weeks ago and all was fine, then inverter blew, all with in a few hundred miles of last service and when Napa got codes, they didn’t see a misfire code but somehow Toyota did. I also never heard any misfire. ) So inverter goes, and the alleged misfire code Maui Toyota says is unrelated and therefore get a separate diagnostic fee, not covered by warranty, and even though not fixed.

I asked Maui Toyota to see the report for the misfire code, They show it to me, but won’t let me have a copy, and won’t let me take a photo of it. I then push back so they eventually give me a copy which I’ll attach.

Now is the confusing part. I get the car back and all is driving fine. A friend hooked up a code reader, and I expect to see no codes, but the same two inverter codes come up. So the ones they fixed are still showing up as active codes, but the one I didn’t fix, and I never saw, doesn’t show up. I don’t know code readers, but the inverter codes that did come up, came up with a yellow light, not a green light or red light. I will say there are no warning lights at all on the car's dash.

I then call the out of state dealer that serviced the car a few weeks ago and they look up my vin and can see the codes Maui Toyota got on the day I brought it in. They also see on the day I picked up my car, after my car was fixed, codes were checked again, and two codes still came up, the same inverter codes which the service guy thought made no sense. I will say he did see the misfire code initially, but not at the end. He also said that the codes are imported from the computer so they couldn’t be manually entered, but he did say technically if somebody wanted to they could trigger a code.