One of the reasons I’ve not posted for a while is through lack of time. This is mainly because we’re so busy in the workshop and with some staff on holiday leave, I’ve been lucky to get home by 8pm most days. Much as I enjoy writing about the motor trade, some evenings I prefer to simply watch TV or go to sleep early.  During these rare moments of TV viewing I rarely pay much attention to the advertisements, preferring to ‘Sky +’ through them. Sometimes however, my eye is drawn to an advert and I quickly rewind and take a look.

Apart from the usual ads designed to make you desire a gleaming new BMW, Audi or Peugeot etc.  there’s very few attempts to try and sell you motoring stuff (except insurance). This leaves your head clear to concentrate on choosing washing powder, chocolate, Cillit Bang or simply enjoy an animated Meerkat! One company that does peddle its wares on the box is my old favourite, Kwik Fit. As regular readers of my blog will know, they’re not my most beloved choice in the world of high-street car repairs. They seem to be expanding their range of services very rapidly and whereas once you might go to them for a set of tyres and an exhaust pipe on a budget, they’ve now moved into the territory of offering car servicing, MOT testing and most mechanical repairs.

What’s wrong with that, you may ask? Well, nothing really – I’m all for a bit of healthy competition and besides, it’s unlikely that they’ll ever try and compete on rebuilding engines, replacing cambelts, stripping gearboxes or any of the other horrible and oily jobs we regularly tackle. My real concern is that almost every week I hear another story from a customer about how they were ‘almost ripped-off’ into spending money for car repairs that weren’t actually needed.

Obviously some of these stories can be discounted on the grounds that they might have just had a bad experience with a particular branch or staff member, or didn’t like what they were being told so sought a second opinion. Sometimes though, I get to see ‘first hand’ just what they’re up to in their quest to relieve the customer of the most money. A couple of weeks ago, I answered the phone to a customer who we’d never seen before. He asked if we could quote for some work that his car needed, and began to reel out a long list of items. My suspicions were instantly raised when he mentioned that he’s taken his car to a branch of the aforementioned company for an MOT test. It turned-out that his car had failed the MOT and he’d been quoted a quite extraordinary price to get it through. The car in question was a 2001 Peugeot 306 that had covered less than 70,000 miles and was in very good condition. The quote he’d been given for the required work just so it’d pass the MOT came to £650 and naturally, he was a little distressed. A brief summary of the failure items on the red ‘VT30′ fail sheet were:

  • Offside front CV gaiter insecure.
  • Offside front CV joint excessively worn.
  • Front brake discs excessively worn.
  • Offside front tyre tread depth below limit (it was actually the nearside that was bald, but whoever entered the MOT on the computer did it wrong!)
  • Handbrake lever has no reserve travel (that basically means it comes-up too many clicks)
  • Front sidelight not working (can’t argue with that)
  • Exhaust system has a mounting that does not fully support it (actually it had 3 perfectly good mountings but more of that shortly)

Anyway, the owner was ‘quoted’ for all the work that was supposedly needed and hence decided to call us as he thought (quite rightly too) that it seemed a little on the expensive side.

Fortunately, the Kwik Fit Fitter (or manager) had thoughtfuly handwritten all the parts (he thought) needed replacing, including new rear brake drums, brake shoes, wheel cylinders and wheel bearings to fix the handbrake. A new driveshaft was required to fix the ‘excessively worn’ CV joint and naturally, the front brake discs that were also ‘excessively worn’ needed replacing, as well as the brake pads. The exhaust system needed replacing as well, and of course the tyre. The other front tyre was close to the limit and this was advised (albeit incorrectly). Anyway, this little lot was to cost £650 and our customer could quite easily have given them the nod, and handed over his credit card for a good old battering.

Once we had the car in our workshop, the first thing we did was put it on the ramp for a closer look. Using the popular expression, ‘imagine our surprise’ , I would have to say ‘Imagine our surprise’ that there was actually very little wrong with the car at all, and certainly nothing like he was led to believe.

One fundamental point of the MOT test in the UK is that it is just a MINIMUM standard. Here’s what the V.O.S.A. MOT manual says about assessing wear of components:

4. Assessment of Component Wear and Deterioration

“Because it is not practicable to lay down limits of wear and tolerances for all types of components on different models of vehicle, an NT (that’s a Nominated Tester) is expected to use experience and Judgement in assessing the condition of a component”. The main criteria to be used when making such assessments are;

a. whether the component has reached the stage where it is obviously likely to affect adversely the roadworthiness of the vehicle;
b. whether the condition of the component has clearly reached the stage when replacement, repair or adjustment is necessary.

Now, whenever I carry out an MOT test, these words are echoing through my head at every stage when assessing a worn component. It’s perfectly possible for a part to be worn, but still perfectly safe. In this case, we have the option to ‘pass and advise’. This demonstrates that the tester has observed that a safety-critical part of the car is worn, but that it’s not SO worn that TODAY it’s dangerous or needs replacing. By advising the customer, they then have some time to get it fixed as it’s quite possible that it might fail the MOT next year.

Going back to the lovely Peugeot on my ramp, several things were clear to me (and the other three MOT testers whose opinions I sought).

  • Apart from a broken securing clip on the Constant Velocity Joint gaiter, there was NO detectable wear to the joint itself and the vehicle clearly did not need a £230 driveshaft. The clip cost 15p and took 5 minutes to fit, so that’s what we did.
  • The handbrake worked perfectly on the brake testing rollers, but the lever did indeed reach the top of its range so had no ‘reserve’ travel. A quick adjustment of the cable freeplay soon sorted this out, rather than spending £250 on new brake drums, wheel bearings, and brake shoes etc.
  • The exhaust mounting – well, the system was perfectly supported by the other four mountings so this was just advised that one was broken.
  • The tyre (well, the other one – not the one they’d failed) was indeed bald. As the other front one was close to the limit, the customer asked if we could fit a pair.
  • The front brake discs – hmmm, what can I say. He was told that it needed new discs and pads (£120 more) to fix this, but the truth is (and I even took photos for evidence!) that the existing pads on the car were virtually new and the discs, whilst undeniably slightly worn and a bit rusty, still had a good year or more of life in them! So, nothing needed there and another £120 saved.

The result was that we booked the car for an MOT the following day and as expected, it only failed on the items that in the testers opinion, genuinely met the fail criteria in the inspection manual. The new clip was fitted to the CV gaiter, the handbrake was adjusted so it worked perfectly on ‘four clicks’ and a new nearside front tyre was fitted (and offside as the customer asked). They’d already changed the blown sidelight bulb (71p and no labour charge – Kwik Fit quoted £3.45!). The car was then retested and all was fine. The relieved owner even decided to treat the car to a full service and his total bill was still £260 less that he would’ve paid just for the supposed MOT fail work. A brief road test of the car showed that all was well and it was actually a very good and well-maintained example. Even applying power on full lock, there wasn’t so much as a ‘tick’ from the supposedly ‘excessively worn’ CV joint.

Anyway, my point is that although authorised by V.O.S.A. to carry-out MOT testing just as we are, there seems to be some kind of different standard applied that by all accounts is more likely to cost the poor motorist dearly. I’m not suggesting for a moment that we would ever knowingly pass a car that should have failed – it’s just that we are very experienced in MOT testing and through regular training, and numerous checks from ‘the man from the ministry’ as we like to call our friendly VOSA enforcement officer, we have an excellent understanding of what’s a pass, what’s a fail and when it’s safe to ‘pass and advise’. Also, because none of our staff are paid a commission or bonus for selling additional work (unlike the fast-fit centres) there’s no reason for them to ‘invent’ things to fix.  All our staff, and those of many other independent garages, are motivated by their own professional pride rather than by a manager trying to get them to sell more bits to replace ones that aren’t worn-out.

So, next time you’re watching the TV and see an advert offering an MOT and ‘full’ service for £150 (we’re usually around £250), ask yourself whether it might be too good to be true, or whether it might actually end-up costing you quite a bit more in the long run.

Like I said, ‘You’ll be amazed at what we do’

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