non HID light problems

I have a 2007 Prius that I purchased used last October. At the time of purchase, it had 57,000 miles on it. The previous owner took it into the dealer a month before trading it in, reporting that the left headlight would "wink" on and off, then finally go off. She would have to turn off the headlights completely to get the left headlight to come back on. The dealership reported "no problem found". Since purchasing the vehicle, I've now begun to experience the same problem as well as both headlights immediately going dimmer after you turn them on. I now have 60,600 miles on the car. I've done some research and it appears this headlight failure is a common issue that Toyota isn't acknowledging as a defect. On this site alone, people are reporting multiple trips to the dealership to replace headlights, purchasing bulbs on eBay and spending hours replacing the lights themselves and I also found a class action lawsuit being filed by a group of 2007 Prius owners all having the same issues as me. I'm going to be taking mine back to the dealer in a week to address this problem. Since my issue was reported by the previous owner, I required the dealership to guarantee they would replace the headlight at no charge if the problem resurfaced. In light of the current mess going on with Toyota, this headlight failure appears to be yet another defect that is coming to light. We'll see what the dealership says when I take it back.

 

Are you touching the glass of the bulbs with your bare fingers when you put the new ones in? Oil on the skin will reduce the life of the halogen bulbs.

 

Ditto that. Touching these bulbs will kill them in weeks. Handle them only while wearing clean gloves.