MOTs are required by law on cars over a certain age. This means that some unsrupulous garages use them as a way to make money – by saying your car will fail if x, y or z isn’t done on them, and of course they will offer to do the work themselves!

The MOT itself must not cost more than £50.35 for a car or caravan, £34.65 for a motorbike with a side car or £27.15 for a motorbike without a sidecar, as of the 7th November 2006.

One of the things you can try is to find a MOT test centre which is setup for local government and council vehicles. These centres must be open to the general public. They only carry out tests and do not fix cars, therefore they have no interest in trying to drum up more business by ‘finding’ faults. You can find out if your local council has got a dedicated MOT centre by calling your local council or looking on their website (bear in mind that not all councils will have dedicated MOT test centres).

If your vehicle does fail it’s MOT, if you get the repairs done at the test centre and the vehicle is retested within 10 days, the MOT test will be free. If the repairs are done elsewhere and the car is retested within 10 days, the MOT fee should be halved.

Unfortunately, this means that if your car fails it’s MOT test at the local council MOT centre, you will have to pay for the retest. However, you know that it is a true fault on the car. You need to make the call between whether to have your car tested at a council centre and potentially have to pay for a second test fee, or have your can tested at a different MOT centre and potentially have to for repairs on your car.

If you are ever worried that your MOT was not carried out correctly, you can appeal to VOSA although you will have to pay for a test fee again.

Click here if you would like to see a list of recommended MOT centres nationwide.

Popularity: 20% [?]