Morris Minor Owners Club

Anyone had their car MOT'd recently, very disapointed that we will no longer be issed a cerificate but instead a boring A4 printed piece of paper. The info says "this document is a receipt style certificate telling you that an MOT Test pass has been recorded on VOSA's database of MOT test results". For £52 I want an old style certificate with watermarks that I can add to the cars history file please.

Sorry mate thats what you get now,have to thank computerisation for that.

Wow £52!Plenty of places round here charging £35 plus a free retest.

tysonn wrote:Wow £52!Plenty of places round here charging £35 plus a free retest.

£30 for an MOT around where I live............

I posted on here before about discount MoT's having been involved with VoSA with past employment, i'm well aware of the discounting practice. This is well versed in the motor trade the garage will discount an MoT to gain more trade through the doors, with a view to getting the business for the repairs of the MoT failures. The garage may charge the customer a discounted rate but must pay VoSA there rate of MoT per Vehicle. The full rate that VoSA charge i believe for a car MoT is £56.80 the garge offer you a discount of £30.00 leaving a balance of £26.80 where do you think the garage gets that from certainly not from there till, but built into the quote they give for the repairs. As for the owners that carry out repairs themselves then they get a good deal by only paying the discounted rate. However MoT retest rules have changed recently and many more items are coming under retest charges. Don't get fooled that your getting a cheaper MoT you'll pay for it somehow in the long run.

Test stations can charge what they like and when it's £30.00 it equates to the hourly rate they charge for repairs. VoSa don't like it, but there is nothing they can do about it unless Testers are found to be deliberately failing to get work, which is an absolute no no in VoSa's eyes.

I have had several £30 MOT's, all passes with no Advisories

Some garages will throw an MOT in for £30 if you get it done at the same time as a service.

Some are simply test stations with no service station attached.

A few will charge £30 in the hope of additional work, but the testers can get 'tested' as well whilst they are doing it

The MOT garage DO NOT pass the cost of an MOT to VOSA or anyone else.......... There is a garage a few miles away from me that offers No pass - No fee MOTs. In other words - you only pay them £40 when the car passes! I suspect they give the car a quick pre-MOT inspection, and only carry out the full test when v confident the car WILL pass. I haven't used them (yet!) since my local garage has always been very fair with me and I feel happy that they will not 'look for work' on the car - since they know full well that I will fix it myself and be back later in the day pestering them for a free re-test.......

I thought that an MOT was completed while logged into VOSA, if not logged in it cannot be classed as an official MOT.

Exactly - but you can do a pre-MOT inspection any time you wish........

The MOT has just been a printed piece of A4 for nearly 10 years already.

The difference now is the A4 paper is plain instead of proper stationary (a change that customers massively dislike).
One of the reasons was becasue of complaints when the printed text missed the white boxes on the green sheet. The other (much more useful) reason is so that the text is now less spread out and this allows the advisories to be on the same sheet!

Feedback to DVLA told them that (too many) people selling a car would throw away the advisories sheet, leaving the new owner in the dark.

Also MOT centres get fed up if/when the pre-printed sheets didn't arrive in the post, or some ###er nicks them from the test centre etc.. There's been the opportunity to check your MOT online for ages, but now it's more relevant.

From an MoT tester with our own testing station, Here's the real reason.
Because ALL the MoT testing stations are live to VOSA at Bristol and all the info that relates to a vehicle is uploaded & stored on the central database in real time.
So if I pass your car at 15:00 hrs on Monday then that pass result is live then, you can go round the corner to the post office who also can see it's MoT'd. The paper cert is no longer needed the police ANP cameras also talk to the data base so plod knows before he stops you wether you have Mot & insurance.
They were origonaly going to do away completley with a paper cert when the green one finished in Nov 2011 but as usual some euro legislation req a written one hence the plain paper certs

As for discount fees, I'm not gong to tell you how much we pay VOSA but we pre buy MoT "slots" in multipluls of 100's, we can sell them on (No VAT) at whatever we like but we can't sell them at a higher price than the reccomend VOSA rate (it's a maximum retail price). Bear in mind thet the financial commitment by an operator quite high our set up stand us at about £50,000.
VTS sites are frequently spot checked/assesed and are in a coulored band rating Green,amber & red We aim for green. That is a result of the site facilities etc cleanliness, systems in place for keys/handovers etc and belive it or not the average age of vehicles tested. ALSO we get points taken off for the % of discount given on reselling MoT's.
PLUS the tester's (NT's) are checked by unanounced visits by VOSA vehicle examiners (VE's) who will pull in a just tested vehicle and test it again, if he finds any faults missed or miss stated (like pass & advice when it should have failed etc) he gives the NT points just like driving opffences on your licence when added up we get a bn from testing or even thrown out of the shceme altogether.

Ohh and we charge £40 but during Feb & March they were offered at £35 promotion.

Just to add This week I tested and passed a lovley red 1970 Triumph Herald convertable thats been off road for 15 years being restored

welshrat wrote:I thought that an MOT was completed while logged into VOSA, if not logged in it cannot be classed as an official MOT.

The car will be logged on as they can't issue a fail if it's not on a test.

As for BMC's nearby garage, it doesn't make any difference when the garage charge it's either £40 test then a free retest or as they are doing it seems free test and then £40 for a retest.
BUT... they can come unstuck because say the free test fails on a mionor item eg Bulb, tyre or wiper blades etc the VOSA rules if it's brought back the next day they CANNOT charge for a retest. I wonder how they get round that!

I think it's important to support the little garage,by buying your test at a fair price,so that they stay in business rather than just the big "rip off" boys.otherwise we will end up with a total government run,no choice. jobsworth set up like Ireland and Spain.

The difference now is the A4 paper is plain instead of proper stationary (a change that customers massively dislike).

Quite right too, now fraudsters won't need to nick stationary or go to the bother of faking watermarked paper before knocking up fake MOTs.
Not everywhere has internet access even now.

MarkyB wrote:

The difference now is the A4 paper is plain instead of proper stationary (a change that customers massively dislike).

Quite right too, now fraudsters won't need to nick stationary or go to the bother of faking watermarked paper before knocking up fake MOTs.
Not everywhere has internet access even now.

That's the whole point! A forgery is useless. Lets imagine you have a car that no MoT and is unlikley to get one, so you take your modern's ligitamatly got MoT and you copy it, alter the copy do whatever is done to forge one.
Then that "forged MoT no matter how good it is will not get you a tax disc or convince plod that your rustbucket has an MoT because it hasn't. The post office, Plod and VOSA all know LIVE online that it aint got an MoT!

The only exeption to this is if the testing station is running in fallback testing mode. That's when the eqiupment in the local station is offline either because of a B.T. line fault or a computer terminal down (They use Lynux so are very reliable) As soon as station is fixed all MoT's conducted in fallback are entered online. This senario is very rare and if it does happen it's usually fixed within minuites if not hours. So the only time your MoT is not on data base is during this short period.

The other sinario is what's called emergency testing, thats if the VOSA mainframe ever goes down. Thats when we open a SEALED package of test certificates under a verbal authorisation from VOSA the tests are done on the stations working equipment when the test is complete instead of entering the results on the station computer we verbally give them to a VOSA head office operative. The emergency certificate we give the presenter needs to be returned to the station in a few days for a plain paper printed one when all is running ok.

And another thing (Oh God I hear you say!), when I went to tax the car at the PO I did not bother taking my documents as my understanding was that in this 'Blade Runner' age (google it kids) they could check that I was legal on line. Yes to the MOT but as the PO sell insurance they are not permitted to access and confirm if I am insured (told that there is a potential conflict of interest). So as there is no fuel left in Wales a brisk 20 minute walk back home, a two hour search for my insurance document and back to the PO, I would of left it until the following working day but told that it was all going up in price from Monday as per budget. As already stated all I wanted was a pretty certificate saying that my old friend was good for another year.

Why did you go down to the P O for the tax disc could have saved your shoe leather and done it online no problems in produceing MoT or Insurance documents they have live copies.

customjob wrote:Why did you go down to the P O for the tax disc could have saved your shoe leather and done it online no problems in produceing MoT or Insurance documents they have live copies.

Supporting the local post office, about the only thing left worth having in the village, plenty of pubs who are struggling, estate agents and ladies hair dressers.

My Traveller passed yesterday and I received the new certificate. I have no problem with that and should I sell the vehicle I will be quite happy to point out the blank area where the advisories would have been if any were given.
As a purchaser I would also be pleased to see the same information. My 'Modern' Caravan tug had an mot when purchased and no advisory sheet with it so I was in the dark as to what may be 'on the way out' ( a recent mot has highlighted what it may have been and it is planned for repair).
This new document albeit 'bland' in appearance does provide the info a purchaser may need when considering a vehicle.

Also we all still have something to add in with the vehicle history file and those on ' mileage related' insurance cover have the documentry proof for the insurers of annual mileage covered.

So in my humble opinion, yes it is dull but better than having nothing to keep or show should the need arise.