Toyota paint warranty on a 12 year old vehicle?!

In 2018 I bought a used pearl white 2012 highlander. I got an unsolicited extended warranty LETTER from Toyota last fall.

The letter said this color doesn't bond very well and their preferred body shop would inspect and repaint any effected areas.

I just picked up my twelve year old car and every panel was re-sprayed and a lot of the trim was replaced (due to single use, sacrificial clips, etc). I'm kinda shocked to be honest but I'm a definitely a believer in Toyota. Invoice for $11k fully paid + a rental car  

Neither Chevy nor Dodge send such letters...

I wonder if them taking care of it is some residual thing left over from frames rotting out prematurely?  Maybe part of the settlement was to ensure rustproofing was adequate?

In reply to John Welsh :

I had some very minor paint loss in the roof gutters and stuff but I figured it was twelve years old and that's life....

I only wish they had asked if I wanted to pay to fill a couple little door dings. They did refinish the front edge of the hood - which had a lot of chips that I had touched up.

Pretty unbelievable. 

Mr_Asa said:

I wonder if them taking care of it is some residual thing left over from frames rotting out prematurely?  Maybe part of the settlement was to ensure rustproofing was adequate?

I don't know but IIRC Woody had a frame replaced on a Taco a while back. That can't be cheap for them to do. And I see a LOT of pearl white highlanders of this generation too...

I did a big job at a Toyota body shop recently.  If they did it like the ones I saw, they didn't just repaint it.  They removed ALL trim and sanded EVERY body panel back to bare metal and repainted.

I was amazed when I saw what they were doing.

Yeah, if you can get Toyota to decide it's a large scale defect, they take care of you. They replaced the entire dash + all 4 door panels on our IS a few years back for free. 

SV reX said:

I did a big job at a Toyota body shop recently.  If they did it like the ones I saw, they didn't just repaint it.  They removed ALL trim and sanded EVERY body panel back to bare metal and repainted.

I was amazed when I saw what they were doing.

That's exactly what the invoice describes. While they were doing it they sent me a report with photos showing all the plastic and trim, the lights, etc removed. They found a lot of stuff under the trim that I couldn't see. 
 

(no idea what would have happened if it wasn't a truly rust free Georgia car)