Todays email - not on the forum page?

... but was it worth it? :huh:

I'm not really sure which parts this guy has had his finger in this week



Obviously the tax loophole item.

But what about the Sports Direct UP TO 90 % off item?
I'm sure that has been in their windows since Christmas, and it's off RRP, RRP usually of brands they themselves own such as Dunlop, Slazenger, Karrimor & Lonsdale.

I'm surprised there was no mention at all of the biggest ever sale this weekend at DFS. :cool:
Amazing savings, but these deals must end Bank Holiday Monday ... allegedly.

Then I saw the "Petrol's up: 10 tricks to slash costs" item.

Trick No.1:
Find your cheapest forecourt.

Thanks for that, I would never have thought of that unless I read the email ... :cool:

Trick No.8:
Hidden council MOT centres. As they don't do repairs, there's no vested interest to fail you. And anecdotally people say it's huge - eg, forumite Fed up hippie says: “Thanks. Our camper van MOT was £37 this year - last year it was £400.

According to the article you link to, that specific user posted that comment way back in 2013!

Allow me to give you some anecdotal evidence from this year when I took my car for an MOT.
My local council MOT station usually charges full price which for a car is £54.85 (I do see today they had an offer on at just £46.50, but that ended yesterday)

I actually paid less than £22 using a discount code at a local garage. Without the code it would have been £25 when I had the test carried out, but todays price (without the code which I believe is still valid for the sub £22 MOT) would be £45, still cheaper than the council.

But as you quite rightfully say, the council provide only the MOT test and do not carry out any remedial repairs.

Did my car fail at this garage I went to that does carry out remedial repairs?

Hell, yeah!

Let me tell you the story. I booked the MOT online and dropped the car off at the appointed time. As I had something else to do at the time, I said I would be back in about an hour, but they had my mobile number if there were any problems.

So when I returned an hour later I was met by this guy who seemed to take pleasure in telling me my car had failed it's MOT.

I thought, here we go... I asked him on what basis it had failed and as he showed me the MOT failure form, he explained that it failed on a maladjusted headlight beam.

I just stood there looking at him incredulous
(For those who don't know, it's not easy to check or correct the correct headlight beam without the specialised optical equipment most garages, and all MOT station have. But with the correct equipment, which the car was obviously already set up to check when he discovered the beam was incorrectly set, it's simply a matter of twiddling a screwdriver, or in my case a hex key, to get the beam correct)

He then explained that he had since corrected the beam.

Here comes the sting I thought, but as I only paid less than £22 for the MOT, another £5 or so to correct the beam wasn't going to kill me. But I was getting annoyed as I had not been given any phone call to agree to the cost of remedial repairs.

Not at all. He said he wouldn't charge me any extra for the remedial work he carried out correcting the beam alignment, and so then handed me the pass certificate too.

So my sub £22 MOT would probably have cost well over £50 if I had gone to the council and then had to take the car elsewhere to have the remedial work carried out (where I'm sure they would have charged something to correct it).
And then, of course, I would also have the inconvenience of having to go back to the council MOT station, to get re-tested and obtain a pass certificate (no charge for this if within 10 working days)
Even if the remedial work carried out was a sham, as is suggested by the article, it would still have got me over 100% more if I had gone to the council.

I doubt my anecdotal evidence will ever be included in the weekly email though...

What is happening to the quality of the weekly email???