You can get your MOT done 28 days before expiry and therefore plenty of time to get stuff fixed/second opinions/ask in here.

My mobile (winter) tyre fitter left a F0rd main steeler to go independent as he was pressured into doing unnecessary work. A local RAC guy who is ex-main steeler has a similar story.

Find a better garage

http://www.goodgaragescheme.com/

I thought as soon as you got a test and it failed it wiped out any remaining time until mot expiry?

Changed a few years ago IIRC

I thought as soon as you got a test and it failed it wiped out any remaining time until mot expiry?

Changed a few years ago IIRC

No it doesn't, your certificate is still valid but you are enlightened with the fact that your car is not roadworthy, it may be a danger to other road users and it may be a condition of your insurance to keep your car in a roadworthy condition.

 

I don't think that even VOSA would give corrupt, dishonest and stupid (as referred to in the above posts) MOT testers the power to revoke MOT certificates.

Im pretty sure it can be revoked if the fault is deemed to make the car un-road worthy. Major items like huge bits of welding, suspension failure etc etc

+1 on what Fordfan said. The MOT has an 'earliest date which you can present you car for MOT to preserve it's anniversary' or words to that effect. It's about a month before the actual expiry date.

Are they really ripping him of though? Maybe the guy doing it wasn't 100% clued up on octavia headlights or maybe he just made a simple mistake?

Let's not lose sight of the fact that we only have one side of the story here.

Ask for a fund from the manager for your MOT by all means but all that running to trading standards and VOSA will do is stress you out.

Find another garage and forgot it.

 

 

The garage do repairs, and following the test, I asked then to give me a quote to fix the parts which needed doing, and then give me a ring. They did this a couple of hours later, and the bill was about £100+ more than I expected, so I queried this, and they told me that I would need a new headlamp assembly, which would be £95 + VAT. I asked them why it could not be adjusted, and they said it was because the adjuster was turning but not doing anything, therefore the whole unit needed replacing.

As far as I am concerned, that is a rip off, whether by design or simple lack of knowledge.

If you do not have the knowledge, then maybe you should be doing another job, or find out the correct way of doing things rather than guessing.

For MOT's get a recommendation, steer clear of big chains of Garages & the likes of Kwik Rip

A fried recently took an Audi to the local main Audi dealer, Quote for repairs needed to pass Mot around £1200, local one man band vag specialist fixed it & MOT'd it for a tadge over £300.

Kwik-Fit Mr Kenji Murai Chief Executive     Email [email protected]

 

http://www.ceoemail.com/s.php?id=9074

Edited 20 November, 201312 yr by Web Ferret

Good find - I might drop him a mail if the complaint I've just lodged via their website to get my £35 back doesn't come to anything. I'll cc him into the note I send to VOSA if I don't get a response within the next 7 days...

Good luck with this. My grandad recently got ripped off to the tune of £770 for the following items from our local Halfords Autocentre branch on his 2005 Citroen Berlingo. He only called them as a letter was sent to him after he had 2 tyres fitted there offering him a MOT and service on his vehicle for £99.. Even listing the registration number!

 

- MOT Test

- Oil and Filter Change

- Front Discs and Pads 

- Replace rear brake cylinders due to them leaking, along with new drums (surely they could have been ground flat at 80k?), but leaving the brake shoes that surely would have been contaminated from fluid leakage??

 

Manager was less helpful when I went down there pointing our that there was £100's of overcharging and that they were just taking advantage of elderly and disabled people - they knew this as the manager collected and dropped the car back once the rip off was complete. My worries of contamination were dismissed totally with the manager shouting at me asking me 'if I was a mechanic'! Surely that is just common sense?
I got quotes (as per instruction from Halfords Autocentre website and the manager thrusted the leaflet into my hand) for a 'price match' from 2 local garages for the same work as listed above, One came in at just over £400 and the other at £430. They dismissed that saying that they supplied 'brakes for life' which meant that the front discs and pads would be replaced whenever required during his ownership - to which I pointed out that they will never need changing again as he only covers around 2k miles a year now and is 82 years old and probably wont be driving for many more years so he should have been given the option for non 'brakes for life'.

 

In the end head office sent a meisly cheque for £32 as that is what they believed they overcharged and gave us their solicitors details if we wanted to take it further.. by this time (took 2 months to get this far) my grandad asked us to stop perusing it as it would end up costing more money...

Good luck with this. My grandad recently got ripped off to the tune of £770 for the following items from our local Halfords Autocentre branch on his 2005 Citroen Berlingo. He only called them as a letter was sent to him after he had 2 tyres fitted there offering him a MOT and service on his vehicle for £99.. Even listing the registration number!

 

- MOT Test

- Oil and Filter Change

- Front Discs and Pads 

- Replace rear brake cylinders due to them leaking, along with new drums (surely they could have been ground flat at 80k?), but leaving the brake shoes that surely would have been contaminated from fluid leakage??

 

Manager was less helpful when I went down there pointing our that there was £100's of overcharging and that they were just taking advantage of elderly and disabled people - they knew this as the manager collected and dropped the car back once the rip off was complete. My worries of contamination were dismissed totally with the manager shouting at me asking me 'if I was a mechanic'! Surely that is just common sense?

I got quotes (as per instruction from Halfords Autocentre website and the manager thrusted the leaflet into my hand) for a 'price match' from 2 local garages for the same work as listed above, One came in at just over £400 and the other at £430. They dismissed that saying that they supplied 'brakes for life' which meant that the front discs and pads would be replaced whenever required during his ownership - to which I pointed out that they will never need changing again as he only covers around 2k miles a year now and is 82 years old and probably wont be driving for many more years so he should have been given the option for non 'brakes for life'.

 

In the end head office sent a meisly cheque for £32 as that is what they believed they overcharged and gave us their solicitors details if we wanted to take it further.. by this time (took 2 months to get this far) my grandad asked us to stop perusing it as it would end up costing more money...

 

had a similar experience with an auto centre a few years back as I was too attracted by the £99 service and came out with a quote of £700 additional work, half of which was not really needed when i got a second opinion from another garage, so I tend to avoid these auto centre places as the managers tend to be on commission basis and take advantage of those not mechanically minded.  

had a similar experience with an auto centre a few years back as I was too attracted by the £99 service and came out with a quote of £700 additional work, half of which was not really needed when i got a second opinion from another garage, so I tend to avoid these auto centre places as the managers tend to be on commission basis and take advantage of those not mechanically minded.  

 

Definitely the case with this! What annoyed me more is my grandad normally runs these things past me before he does them, but on this case he didnt! I have a lot of friends in the trade and they have heard of this before from Halfords Autocentre and £700 seems to be their default bill level to reach when a car comes into them... 

 

This is why I use VAG independant garages and no-one else, these big 'autocentre' chains are ****...

No it doesn't, your certificate is still valid but you are enlightened with the fact that your car is not roadworthy, it may be a danger to other road users and it may be a condition of your insurance to keep your car in a roadworthy condition.

 

I don't think that even VOSA would give corrupt, dishonest and stupid (as referred to in the above posts) MOT testers the power to revoke MOT certificates.

Must have been a consultation I read that never came to anything.

Great news - it has passed, and without any advisories!

 

However, it was the same guy who did the test last time, and he was really grumpy when I told him about the adjustment screws, and he reckoned that the headlamp aim was still "marginal".

He of course assumed that it was just me who adjusted it, but yesterday I had the rest of the MOT work done at another garage (for a third of the price quoted at the first garage), and they did further adjustments to the headlamps, to get them spot on. I watched whilst they were doing it, and you could really see the difference it made.

The original garage did the retest for free, but to be honest I will not use them again.

The retest will be free, they all are. Shows how much they were trying it on

I had kwik fit on the phone who contradicted themselves about 5 times in the space of 5 minutes. Writing to vosa. It's less about the money, more about how they just don't have a clue...

The retest will be free, they all are. Shows how much they were trying it on

 

 

At the bottom of their fail sheet, it said that they would charge a partial retest fee if the work was not carried out by them.

I simply told them that considering what had happened over the headlamp, I would not expect to pay that.

ive never heard that before. Sound like a real bunch of rip off merchants. 

 

I've never had work done by an MOT tester and re-tests and always been free

You can get a free retest on the items listed on the displayed poster before the end of the next working day.  Beyond that, they are within their rights to charge for a retest.  We don't usually charge for retests regardless of where the repairs have been done.  You only get one retest per full test, if it fails the retest then a full test needs to be done, which is chargeable.

 

We had a situation the other day where we had a retest to do on the last day that it was allowed (10 working days limit for a retest), the car failed due to a brake hose not fitted correctly when the driveshaft was reassembled after repair, by another garage.  Apparently it was our fault as according to the repairing garage they didn't touch it and our tester missed it on the initial test.  Despite them working within 3 inches of it, they didn't notice it either, we could have charged for another full test, but we did it for free and even replaced a headlamp bulb free of charge after it failed that test.

 

Think I'll go to Halfords for my test next year, only a couple of £s more than what I usually pay and I won't have to get cold and wet doing it myself.