Help with car decision

BeenThroughItAll

londonTiger wrote: »

What how are they staying afloat at £30 per test? £30 would just about cover the wages for the mot tester, does not take into consideration overheads like insurance, opportunity cost of using ramp for more lucrative jobs etc. Rent, rates etc.

In fact £30 mots will be operating at a loss.

Are they even charging vat or is it a cash in hand gig?

Cobblers. How do you know how much they're paying for a start? The North East isn't London you know.


MOTs are a good source of returning trade. If they don't rip people off at MOT time, they gain their trust.


I do almost every job on my cars myself because I can, and I want to. Occasionally, there are jobs that I'd just rather not tackle (like replacing all the brake pipes on my wife's BMW - which I could do myself, but it's dirty and faffy and I couldn't be bothered); I trust very few garages to do work for me, but all of those I do trust have been around for years, and all of them offer MOTs for £30-£40.


An MOT takes about 45 minutes, and most of the garages have an 'MOT bay' which is intended for use only for MOTs, so they're covering the cost of that bay with other work in any case. If they can keep it full, they're almost certainly making money.


You're also clearly not aware that MOT fees are not subject to VAT. I always pay by invoice and so the fees aren't going under the counter. I believe VOSA will actually compare MOT income to tested vehicles in any case, from what I'm told.

Horizon81

londonTiger wrote: »

The council doesn't carry out any repairs, so they are more likely to give a balance view rather than a regular garage who has an interest in doing repair/service work.

The whole reason why council provide MOT services to the public is because of a rule that all MOT centres must be open to the public. Otherwise they are primarily created to certtify their fleet vehicles.

This is not true of my local authority who offer the full range of garage services, winter checks from £25 etc etc.

londonTiger

Horizon81 wrote: »

This is not true of my local authority who offer the full range of garage services, winter checks from £25 etc etc.

That's new and unusual. It's still different though because the public sector garage worker is on a salary and unlikely to have any performance related incentives to do extra repair work. Their primary function is to maintain their councils fleet vehicles.

E.g. they're not under pressure from management to make money. In fact they'd probably rather not do any unnecessary work for the public and focus on the fleet.

BeenThroughItAll

londonTiger wrote: »

That's new and unusual. It's still different though because the public sector garage worker is on a salary and unlikely to have any performance related incentives to do extra repair work. Their primary function is to maintain their councils fleet vehicles.

E.g. they're not under pressure from management to make money. In fact they'd probably rather not do any unnecessary work for the public and focus on the fleet.

Councils increasingly outsource fleet maintenance and repair, and outsource entire services (like refuse collection) so they don't have the large vehicle fleets they once did, so these council garages aren't exactly flooded with work.


Ergo, the staff don't need any pay incentives or pressure from management to do repair work. The incentive is that if they keep the place busy, they keep their jobs.

londonTiger

BeenThroughItAll wrote: »

Councils increasingly outsource fleet maintenance and repair, and outsource entire services (like refuse collection) so they don't have the large vehicle fleets they once did, so these council garages aren't exactly flooded with work.


Ergo, the staff don't need any pay incentives or pressure from management to do repair work. The incentive is that if they keep the place busy, they keep their jobs.

Yup, someone who works at as chain garage may be explicitly told "you need to make £4000 this month on extra repairs on all MOT/service visits". I worked in retail and I know how it works. I worked in JJB and we had to sell 50% shoecare products for shoes sold. Their math was that the shoecare would pay for the payroll and some overheads if targets were met. So staff paid for themselves.

It did create a boiler room scenario where sales staff would pressure shoe buyers into buying shoecare products. Also created a scenario where if someone was wanting to try on a £15 per of shoes they would be fobbed off and passed around to the weakest sales guy because it would mess with their sales records as they're not likely to buy shoe care.

Council would not have that mentality at all.

The council MOT centre I went to probably does service jobs in house as they save money. The garage was the size of an aircraft hanger (albeit a small one) and there were plenty of council branded vehicles parked inside there. it's always slow there - the guy takes his time (MOT takes 1h+ with the council). Everything is done thoroughly but as I said they're in no hurry to turn MOTs over quickly.

palasmy

Right, I wished we had a MOT service offered by Council. Like said I have used this chain garage for quite a while now and every year I have to come up with a minimum of £400 during the MOT time and the MOT is charge at £28.00 discount (normal price is £59.00).


Meanwhile to update on my case, I had to opt to spend the £400 to get the MOT as I have accepted an offer to relocate to Oman in June and so it makes more sense to keep using this car than having to invest on a another new car. Of course, this would mean that I will have to spend another couple of hundreds towards insurance and road tax which are due in march and may.


Just to add, it is really difficult for any one with little knowledge about car mechanics to evaluate the comments and recommendations these garages say and quite often have to trust them otherwise you feel like you are risking yourself and your family in car. Having said that, it is also some times obvious that the garages use the MOT times as an opportunity to rip you off by failing you as there are several parts that require replacement. So, in that respect, service that is not purely interested on business but offers a service to the motorists will be great and in that respect, council MOT's can be relied I think.


Cheers for all the valuable thoughts and comments