Resounding 'no' to deregulated MoT fees
- What Car? readers against deregulated MoT fees
- Government considers garages setting MoT price
- Tell us what you think
Last week the government announced it would consider deregulating MoT fees, so that garages could charge whatever they want for the compulsory test.
The government argued that market forces would set the price of a MoT test – currently there is a maximum cap of £44.15 – however not one What Car? reader who took part in our e-mail poll was in favour of deregulation.
Below is a sample of readers' opinions on why deregulation of MoT test costs is a bad idea.
The MoT is a mandatory test, as decided by Government agencies, and the cost has been set in order to reflect this.
To take away the capped level of cost is in one way going to make the marketplace competitive (although many places will offer a reduced price MOT for previous customers anyway at present), but is also going to cause problems.
I'm not sure the cost will actually rise that much, as garages will want to keep the custom, but why give the garages the chance to put prices sky high anyway? Especially when some dealers will quite happily charge a lot more than they need to in order to get work done.
Dave Ashley
Tax tax and more tax...
Harry Weaver
This would be outrageous just think all those MOT companies making all those ££££s. Bad idea!
Mark Mortimer
Where is the government going? If they think that deregulation will lower prices they must be mad.
Mike Gilmore
I think this would be bad news. We don't choose to have our cars MOT'ed, we are forced to by the government. And yet the vast majority of car owners also get their cars regularly serviced. You might even argue that the MOT is superfluous, as the car should be roadworthy if properly serviced.
If the government want to do anything they should scrap the MOT and instead make it compulsory to service your car annually, or as directed by the manufacturer (e.g. variable service intervals on Audis, BMWs etc).
Maybe services could include some of the checks from the MOT, as they probably do already anyway. That way we don't end up paying twice for the same work, once at the service and once at the MOT.
John Franklin
Normally in an industry where there are good general standards I wouldn't mind market forces deciding on prices on such things. Taking into account all the articles on the website in the past few months about how much shoddy work is done by garages at unfair prices, and with no standards body, the consumer is at the mercy of dodgy garages.
I don't like them setting a price to do an essential and important service until I know I can trust the garage doing it.
Paul Kendler
So we are now going to be subject to rackets. It is not even opening it up to competition as many of the garages do not currently charge the full amount.
Robert Daniell
We are quite aware of the amount of cowboys in this industry and I'm sure that the Government also has the same knowledge, so why would we allow these cowboys to charge unsuspecting MoTorists even more money for a job they don't do properly to begin with?
Chris Merrills
As for the MoT tester in your article commenting that two guys taking one hour between them... I would love to know where he works as in my experience of all garages including major franchised main dealers it is more like one guy less than 30 minutes.
We all know without regulation it is a great opportunity for garages to make a fast buck out of the MoTorist.
Steve Norris
Garages don't have to carry out MOT tests if they don't want to; there doesn't seem to be a shortage of MOT test stations so why mess us around even more; a fixed fee is one less thng to worry about!
Chris Lewis
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