Changes to the date of the first MOT test (an open consultation).

Rroff said:
Wasn't really the aspect I was focusing on as debatable but to be honest I don't have much sympathy - I know things have got more expensive but for instance I had a aux/fan belt changed recently - dealer wanted £72 labour (and they were doing me a favour on the labour rate), £45 in parts, most of the other garages I got quotes from, even the little indie places, were around £200. Dunno how that matches up with other parts of the country mind.

(As an aside it is a £17 part - if it wasn't for the weather and lack of a decent place to do it I'd have done it myself).
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You don’t have much sympathy for those providing a valuable service trying to earn an honest living? Would an extra tenner impact you at all?
 
Doobedoo said:
You’re not understanding. Mot testers are in short supply which means wages have gone up, electricity has gone up, rent has gone up, the cost to have someone like me come and repair equipment has gone up, for me to calibrate the equipment which is compulsory every 6 months has gone up. They have to do training, they have to upgrade or replace their equipment, the ministry want equipment to now be directly connected to DVSA servers, that costs money. I know of a garage that has shutdown because he’s had enough but prior to it he explained to me that he would be better off not mot’ing for the reasons I have given.
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Absolutely bang on the money.
Most testers including myself have pretty much had enough of the BS yearly assessments, the inspector visits that assume one is guilty of some wrong doing and all the other crap involved.
It's far easier and better paid to go back on the spanners and to be left alone to get on with the job.
That said, the wages have increased by a fair margin over the last few years, but for most it just isn't worth the grief.
 
Doobedoo said:
You don’t have much sympathy for those providing a valuable service trying to earn an honest living? Would an extra tenner impact you at all?
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Not to say these places are crooks, my local Nissan dealer are a hard working and honest bunch and will knock the labour rate down for me when they can, but the kind of prices a lot of these places around me charge doesn't leave me with a lot of sympathy if they have to subsidise MOTs out of it. I might have a bit more sympathy for places where their main service is MOTs.

Personally a tenner isn't really here or there but I'm not so much thinking of myself here.
 
Doobedoo said:
The price of a Mot needs to increase anyway, it hasn’t been changed in a decade yet nearly everything else has increased. The hourly rate most garages charge is on par or exceeds the price of a mot, which means a lot of garages make little on a mot and some maybe makes less than the price. The whole thing is complete nonsense.
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A lot of places seem to typically charge less than the recommended government price though, so can’t be that bad?
 
ajf said:
A lot of places seem to typically charge less than the recommended government price though, so can’t be that bad?
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Interesting point - most places around here are £40-45 for car or van MOTs, some slightly less (most of them have just increased it from £35 for a standard MOT).
 
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Doobedoo said:
What about garages that don’t mot, that don’t have those costs. Lower hourly rates, more attractive for customers.
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Most garages I've been to and know of have upped their rates. If you've got a good customer base and reputation then an increase in cost won't send customers running for another garage.
 
Semple said:
Most garages I've been to and know of have upped their rates. If you've got a good customer base and reputation then an increase in cost won't send customers running for another garage.
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Lot of people out there who'll only pay the minimum they have to but personally I tend to go back to the same 2-3 places, even though they aren't the cheapest and/or are increasing prices, because they give a level of customer service and workmanship other places don't.
 
How would folks in Britain feel about dedicated centres as we do in NI? Fixed £30.50 to take your car to an indepedent test centre and if it fails, take it to a mechanic/diy and then retested. This last few years since covid however, there have several month backlogs and also the company that had been mainitaining the lifts hadn't being doing a great job and that added to the mess. It's 4 years to our first MOT. I don't mind the system here, when it was working up to covid as it's a totally independent inspection.
 
Semple said:
Most garages I've been to and know of have upped their rates. If you've got a good customer base and reputation then an increase in cost won't send customers running for another garage.
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They’ve upped their rate because they’ve had too. Everything has got more expensive, it’s being talked about in multiple threads about all kids of different industries. Every garage is in the same boat and pretty much every garage I go to is busy. Many garages are under staffed, I know of a car sales business that have a lack of mechanics and mot testers and they apparently are offering 40k a year to mot testers.
 
ajf said:
A lot of places seem to typically charge less than the recommended government price though, so can’t be that bad?
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They make their money of service items. They will actively push for brake disks and pads to be changed, tracking to be done ect.

I know of garages that have seized taking on trade mots because it’s not worth their while to do it anymore.
 
So what you are saying is, there isn't much margin to be made in a £45 2 hour visit that requires lots of gear? Shock. The sooner we remove the ability for dodgy back street garages to do MOTs the better. The place near me is an MOT factory. You fail or pass, they don't care - and they don't do any work at all themselves. Completely independent.

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Different set up that. Using pits which don’t require maintenance, multiple tests per braketester ect.

But anyway I’m just sharing my experiences, I talk to testers and garage owners on daily basis. Some will be doing fine others won’t but not many vital services have had a price freeze for a decade.
 
Just proves that MOTs can be done very effectively for £45 and the garage can make a fortune. This is a you problem, not a system problem. If you can't make the numbers work, stop doing MOTs. Simples. Plenty of garages do it just fine.
 
[TW]Fox said:
2 hours? More like 45 minutes :D
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Tbf the stats that OP posted shows an average time of 36 minutes! If you can juggle the cars effectively (space wise) and get the volume, it is a winner-winner chicken-dinner. The garage doesn't even need to train the staff as its all provided for by the government.
 
"MOTs don't stack up financially"
'So why does no one charge the maximum fee?'
"Because they make the money on service items"

...not seeing the problem here - if you make your money on service items, cost the MOT shortfall into the overheads/margins. If you make money on neither, you're probably doing something wrong :p
 
dLockers said:
Tbf the stats that OP posted shows an average time of 36 minutes! If you can juggle the cars effectively (space wise) and get the volume, it is a winner-winner chicken-dinner. The garage doesn't even need to train the staff as its all provided for by the government.
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It generally takes longer than that as you have to retrieve the car, spend time booking the car in, allowing it to warm sufficiently in order to do the emissions test. Some places like you posted will be very efficient, the majority won’t be.

Like I said if they were charging £45 10 years ago and not making bags of money, the chances of making bags of money today is a fair bit lower.

Anyhoo time to leave it alone.
 
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