under the hood

Car dealers and repair facilities alike will want to confirm the failure when it occurs. This is the only way to definitively determine what has gone wrong. Anything else is just guesswork -- just like on this forum. We can say we suspect a starter failure, but until you get it to happen and confirm the failure during testing, it's all a guess. I know it's frustrating, but keep working towards a good diagnosis by leaving the vehicle for repeated attempts for failure while testing. There could be a few different causes, and wasting money fixing the unknown is not a good method.