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Ive been down this road as well. I hadn't used 3rd to 4th let alone 4th very much at all for the first 10k miles of my car. 5k miles in I noticed 4th crunching and it started to get pretty bad by 7k or so. The dealer noted it and around 5 or 7k miles. I had the dealer mark me having issues multiple times with the car being completely stock. Eventually I switched to motul and it was noticeably better. It took a few hundred miles before it felt better and then a few thousand miles later I had switched back to OEM fluid to see how it felt and it instantly felt horrible. It took a while for Toyota to agree to warranty it. The at first said it was normal even though it did it at every single shift (100% of the time!!!) at 3,800+RPM. This is below highway speeds! They said to just shift below that. After the dealer talked to the regional service head he got them to agree to replace it. The new transmission had grinds from 0 miles on the first test drive. I put Motul in it immediately after and it seems to be getting better. My girlfriends car has the same issue but going into third gear. We swapped in Motul and the issue got significantly better within 100-200 miles. She had ~ 3,500 miles on the car at the time.
Just as the OP I have never had transmission issues before. Even on my S2000 that I thoroughly abused I sold it at nearly 80,000 miles with the OEM clutch (people commonly replaced them at 40-60k) and it felt brand new. I am extremely easy on my transmissions and clutches.
On this topic I was told that Toyota has put a halt on transmission replacements at this time and is further investigating the issue. I was told I received one of the last transmissions.
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