A mechanic has taken to social media to share the displeasure of a man who said Toyota quoted him $1,400 to repair the headlight assembly on their RAV4 crossover. Tom from Spinelli Automotive (@spinelli.auto) shared the customer’s displeasure on TikTok.
The car was a 2026 Toyota RAV4, and Tom’s video showed the damage to the passenger-side headlight. “We got a 2026 RAV4. Probably the newest Toyota I’ve ever worked on. Pretty exciting problem here. They just ran into something and [expletive] their headlight,” he said in the video.
Pulling tape applied to the cracked headlight shows just how badly damaged the headlight assembly is. The repair isn’t too difficult, but it sometimes involves removing the front bumper, which can be time-consuming. But that was the least of the problems for this particular customer.
As it turned out, this customer had been quoted a quite ridiculous sum of money to get the repair done. Tom said they had a quote for $1,400 to repair the headlight assembly, and that a “relearn procedure” was needed to perform the fix on the car.
What Toyota Said About the Headlight Fix
@spinelli.auto replacing the headlight assembly on this brand new rav4 #autorepair #fortmyersmechanic #spinelliauto #toyota #mechanicnearme ♬ original sound – Spinelli Auto
“It’s pretty tore up, so you guys probably know, but most of the time you got to pull a bumper to replace a headlight assembly,” said Tom, referencing the repair. The Toyota dealership the customer first went to, however, said it wasn’t as simple as installing a fresh kit. They told the customer that a “relearn procedure was required, and that no other mechanic could replicate the process.
“The dealership told them that they had to … there was some crazy relearn procedure that nobody could do to replace their headlight assembly,” said Tom, before he got onto the cost the dealership had quoted. “New one from the dealer was like $1,400 or something,” Tom said. That seemed a ridiculous amount to the customer, so he decided not to give Toyota all that money to spend on the car.
So the customer bought their own assembly and took it to Tom’s workplace, Spinelli Automotive, for them to install instead. “Customer found one of their own. We’re just gonna put it in and see if [they] really need to do all those reset procedures. We’re gonna see if this one works, and I have a really good feeling that it will,” Tom said. He didn’t think the relearn procedure was needed, and so was confident that he and his team could get the headlight assembly installed and working with little to no fuss.
Did They Get the Car Working as Intended?
A follow-up video from Tom revealed the result of the work done to the RAV4. Regarding the relearn procedure, Tom said: “We wanted to see if we really had to; turns out we do not.”
“Who knows if they were given misinformation on purpose to try to make a sale or not. I wouldn’t be able to say,” added the mechanic. For them, the repair was a doddle and offered no trouble at all.
Tom said the difference between mechanics like himself and sales service advisers at dealerships is that the latter often have not repaired a vehicle themselves before. Hence the whole “relearning procedure” that Toyota said the customer would have had to go through.
As it transpired, this wasn’t needed, and Tom and his team got the customer back on the road.