Posted by Mark Storey on March 21, 2005, 12:22 am, in reply to "MOT GOING LIVE"
Hi Dan and All,
My local MOT station was one of the 30 or so, original guinea pigs, so I’ve been used to submitting vehicles for the best part of a year now. They have 2 bays and two full time testers and one assistant. They can also call on another two from the workshop if required. They carry out tests on demand from 8.30 until 5.00 pm. They carry out a full and proper test every time. If a full re-test is required then that’s what it gets – no messing. Full price is charged to the public and the trade get a discount. I spend between £300 and £600 a month with them so I expect a discount.
How it works in practise.
At the moment it takes just over an hour for a test to be completed, but this is because they are running the paper and computer system in tandem. This can be longer if the VOSA database decides to offer a thousand choices or so. (It pays to get every single detail off the vehicle to save some legwork). If you can’t drill down the list to a relevant vehicle, then you start a new file. In theory, at the next MOT the details will come straight up. The test is then conducted in the normal way.
So far so good….but:
Forget having one terminal if you have more than one test bay you will need one per bay. The second terminal is a slave and I know they’ve had problems logging in and out of that one. One tester uses this exclusively now and the others log in and out of the master. So you can have three logged in on the master and one on the slave OK.
Treat your ID card like a friend. They seem to be very vulnerable to crashing. Expect to spend a long time on the phone when this happens. Now that they’ve dropped the hook up to the Gas tester, I can’t see any reason why you need a card anyway.
“ITHINK MOTS AND RETESTS SHOULD BE FULL PRICE,IT SHOULD ROOT OUT THE TEST STATIONS THAT CHARGE LESS THAN 15 QUID FOR A MOT AND ALSO DODGY MOT CERTS.”
Sorry, but the system will be about as useless as the Number plate fiasco in terms of fraud prevention. Nothing to stop an unscrupulous Tester logging in, sitting around for 45 minutes and printing out a pass. The only thing that will stop is the theft of the pass book and stamp – and how many of those go missing in a year?
“WILL YOU CARRY OUT FULL RE-TESTS IF VEHICLE LEAVES THE GARAGE.”
I know this has to be done, and I can tell you it’s a complete pain having a full re-test for a CV boot and a bulb. If the vehicle has done no more than 500 miles since the failure notice, I’d like to see only the failed items and advisories re-tested. Re-testing of the lights and tyres would be mandatory. How about lobbying VOSA to introduce this?
Really you have nothing to worry about. When it’s running properly it will add very little time to the test, and as the database expands, pattern failures, should be spotted quickly and incorporated into the checklist. The biggest opportunity they’ve missed is to incorporate an insurance check and road fund license into the scheme. The customer could then have left the premises with a legal vehicle, complete with an anti-tamper disk fitted to their windscreen showing all vehicle details.