MOTs used to constantly fail

Mon_Save_Discuss

I just wanted to make a post about MOTs. For literally decades, my car used to fail every time (with all of the well franchises). This was despite having my car serviced regularly. The average cost of a so called MOT failure was around £250!! I think I've saved literally thousands of pounds. I then found out about independent MOT centres that are run by local council. I believe most major cities, towns have them. All of the cars in our family passed there MOTs over many many years. I remember my car having 1 failure (and I wanted to know about), but that was about it. To think that I've been ripped all those years is really annoying. The system is not right in my opinion. This is really a post in an attempt that if you have your car maintained, then it shouldn't fail its MOT. If it does, give the independent MOT test centres a go; they have nothing to gain from failing. Mine doesn't, but I found a brilliant trustworthy mechanic which is rare.

jackieblack

Martin has been advising this for many years
This particular article on the main site is from nearly 10 years ago
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2016/03/20-tricks-to-drive-down-motoring-costs/

vacheron

I used to do this regularly before my mum retired as she worked for a local council who had an MOT centre on the site. On the day my MOT was due we would swap cars and she would drive mine in, leave it with them, and drive it home at night. 

As you mentioned it was a perfect scenario as they had nothing to gain by identifying unnecessary work, but had an obligation to conduct the MOT properly to ensure that the car was safe rather than just "signing it off".

In my experience the established "back street" independents have been a good second place since, and the main dealer franchises by far the worst.
Our 12 year old VW Tiguan is still running on the same anti roll bar bushes 7 YEARS after the main VW dealer recorded them as "seriously worn" and in need of urgent replacement at a stupid cost of many hundreds of pounds.. 

My local independet tests them every year and we have a running joke each time along the lines of "Hey, your anti roll bar bushes... guess what.... nothing wrong with them!"