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Darlinks, wonderfulls newses*, Hallifo0ds is a be giving free* MOTs


castros_bro

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The local old school testing station I use has recently taken on an ex KwikFit tester, when I was talking to him he said as a tester for KF he was expected to find £5000 worth of business for the branch every day. :shock: . Thankfully he seems not to have brought that philosophy with him to his new employer! :-D

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I rate F1 Autocentre in Bulwell, Nottingham, Family owned chain allegedly, and they seemed to err on the side of extreme generosity on the Streetshite's test earlier this year.

 

I believe a lot of 'national chains' are franchises these days, so it all depends on whether you have a good one or a bad one.

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Interestingly Bulwell Kwik Fit also seem a decent bunch - when I had a blow on the middle section of the Streetwise the fitter let me have a look and explained the whole middle section including the cat would have to be replaced. When I asked him how much he said better off getting one off eBay mate, but I'll look it up for a laugh - £350. Indie down the road did it for a third of that.

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Great to hear that a few of you have had good experiences, after all they are human beings so the odd one must be ok, but I'm staying totally clear of Halfords, Qwik Fit and anything similar.

 

I pay full whack for MOTs.  Almost always pass, always get told what I need to fix or look at, and occasionally when something needs to fail, it does. 

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And I have used the local Halfords for all my MOTs and they are great. No strange advisories or fails.

 

You can book them online so have a guaranteed slot which makes things really easy.

 

As always it seems to be about who works there rather than other things.

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I'm tempted to try them if it's actually free, but our local Halfords doesn't have a service centre, so it wouldn't really work out financially. I'd reserve judgement until they've actually done the test. I'm sure there are enough clueless morons out there with cars that actually so need a shit load of work that it still pays for them.

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I'm tempted to try them if it's actually free, but our local Halfords doesn't have a service centre, so it wouldn't really work out financially. I'd reserve judgement until they've actually done the test. I'm sure there are enough clueless morons out there with cars that actually so need a shit load of work that it still pays for them.

"Main dealer MOT" for the Matiz?
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"Don't bring this sack of shit back next year"

Exactly what a friend was told one year from his local MOT centre when he took is thrice-scrapped Orion 1.6diesel in. It was, to be fair, fucked.

 

"We'll scrape a pass this year, but I don't want to see it again".

 

So he took it somewhere else the year after.

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Going against the grain a little here, I reckon the vast majority of Halfords/National Tyre type places (gonna reserve judgement on Kwik Fit) are absolutely perfect for the vast majority of shiters.

 

Cars are reasonably well looked after (OK, a lot* of them are), most of us clearly do the work ourselves and crucially, they've got no interest in taking on track rod ends on a 90s R8. Too much of a potential ramp-occupying ballache. These guys work on volume.

 

If you rock up in a 5 year old Focus, you may well get a rimming - cos all the work is dead simple for them to do, parts will arrive in 10 minutes and the owner is happy to pay so the can clear off back to the school run (other lazy stereotypes freely available). None of the guys in my local chains wanted to get near a 25 year Rover 827 - they were happy to talk about it ("don't see many of these" and the usual) but they were probably terrified I was going to ask them to sort the handbrake or something.

 

At MOT time, I've taken my various 800s to the chains on and off for years now, and it's usually been a decent experience. I can't recall any work-fishing whatsoever (other than a half-hearted "we've advised on the tyres, do you want us to quote because they are quite low...?"). Will probably carry on for the foreseeable.

 

(*let's ignore my experience of trying out Servicing Stop*)

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"Don't bring this sack of shit back next year" on the official record may cause offence!!

 

In jest (obviously)

I once had "I don't know why you fucking bother" on gaining pass on a mini 850

 

To be fair the failure sheet was very long And it probably wasn't worth the hours I spent on it.

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Did they have to replenish the paper in the printer? :)

 

It was 1992, and they had to go to 3 extra failure sheets - Actually can't remember what wasn't fucked on that 1978 mini. But I bodged them all to get it through.  Brakes, Pipes, rust, Lighting, More rust, The only things that passed first time was the remould tyres. 

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I've started using the garage next door to work for MoTs.

 

They borrow tools from us and vice versa, so we have a good relationship with them.

They can normally fit me in same or next day, I leave the keys with them at 8:30 and they collect and return the car to the car park. They can do the job any time during the day, at their leisure. Nice and easy for all involved.

 

They seem fairly relaxed and not at all picky when testing old cars, the last test I had done the tester put a couple of advisories on a post-it note for my attention, rather than putting them on the actual MoT.

 

£35 with a fiver trade discount.

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If you happen to have trade plates or can borrow some, stick them in the windows when you get there.

 

These places in my experience don’t try it on anywhere near as hard if you’re a trader...

I'm able to borrow trade plates. I'll try this. I assume it gets mot'd as normal with the cars reg etc?

 

Sent from my FS8010 using Tapatalk

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It was a stand alone. Its a long thin shop in a mall  with a number of other phone places. Clean and tidy - well lit etc. However the staff were all at the back sitting down chatting amongst themselves. The enquiry about a phone that had been purchased there (it was a how to use it type enquiry - my friend has some (mild) mental health problems) has managed to get it bunged up with adverts I think that came through his facebook use but I am not sure). Staff were not interested and sent us to the Samsung shop opposite without even having a look. Samsung sent us back to Carphone because the info on the phone would need backing up (copying) before anyone could clear the rubbish. The carphone copying service was not working. It was the apathy that bothered me. Like they are happy to sell something after that you are on your own. I will have a go at doing it - its a different phone from mine so I will need to look it up. Its no big deal - but its not the kind of shop (Carphone) that I would use - O2 seem to have better customer service or John Lewis. 

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  • 4 weeks later...

Well I seem to have almost (8 down and one to go) run out of things to get free MOTs on. Today's freebe covered the veg drinking Renner Megane. Best was the Micra K11 which had sat in someone garage for 7 year and was facing the scrappy but now has another year of life.

 

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post-7239-0-94101000-1540050696_thumb.jpg

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