Services and MOT with internet voucher

pollyanna24

I have bought items from internet voucher sites before, but not sure about this one. My car is due a service and MOT, but the deal is £29 down from £150 and it does seem a little too good to be true.

Just wondered what other people thought about these services with a voucher. My brother reckons that to get their money back, I will end up paying a fortune in parts and I should just take my car to my normal garage for service and MOT.

Joe_Horner

There's absolutely no way in the world they can do a service (even an oil / filter change) and MOT for that if they're not going to find other work that you really "must" get done.

Say a gallon of oil @ £10 bulk, a filter at £3 trade (both prices possibly optimistic) and, iirc, about £5 of the test fee to DVSA for the MOT slot. That gives them direct costs of £18, with just £11 left over to cover between 1 /12 and 2 hours of wages + overheads.

It's almost certain they'll do the service first and come up with a large list of things that need to be done in order to pass the MOT. Making up failures on the MOT itself is nowhere nears a widespread as some people believe because, sooner or later, they'll get caught out. But, if they service first, there's nothing at all to stop them telling you that your brakes, exhaust, and half your steering aren't going to pass.

You might be able to force the issue at that point and get them to test it anyway, in which case all these definite failures will magically disappear, but it's more likely that they'll virtually refuse to do the test until the repairs are carried out.

DUTR

pollyanna24 wrote: »

I have bought items from internet voucher sites before, but not sure about this one. My car is due a service and MOT, but the deal is £29 down from £150 and it does seem a little too good to be true.

Just wondered what other people thought about these services with a voucher. My brother reckons that to get their money back, I will end up paying a fortune in parts and I should just take my car to my normal garage for service and MOT.

You're brother has a point, and I'd be dubious too, however it depends on the redemption voucher, will the garage doing the service know you got the voucher at a discount price? If not then it maybe worth chancing.