Dropped it off this morning for it’s half price MOT.

Miss ‘spoon has her money on indicator bulbs the wrong colour

Mine’s on a dim (but not actualy blown) numberplate bulb or faulty seal and “your emissions were close, have you considdered (insert brand of expensive red-ex here”).

you most definantly need a new exhaust and your brake pads are 75% worn.

and that tires worn – but you need to replace all 4 to get even wear…..

Brakes…your brakes are worn Sir. We need to replace them all.

(Well that’s what they got my mother in law with. She paid them too and she was off on a long trip and thought it best to be safe 😥 )

If say brakes too! They must have targets to sell x number a week.

Slight misting on one damper = trying to sell you a whole cars worth of suspension parts

my bet is on faulty brakes, they tried that one on my rally spec mini that had just been rebuilt with new calipers, lines, discs etc etc. wouldn’t let me take it away until they sorted it. All work was carried out by a very well know competition car specialist and could stop quicker than you could think about it.

Threatened them with theft and reported them to VOSA

Brakes deffo they tried that on a friends car. I’d replaced them a month before. Needless to say they got told to rod off.

Never had any shenanigans with KwikFit with my old Honda, same guy did it at least five years in a row, nothing dodgy. Bloke called Froggatt at the Doncaster branch. He did have to fail it for a broken suspension drop link once, but gave it a free retest and pass when I brought it back two days later.

Front wiper fail – damaged rubber is very slightly scraping the screen. Also, a couple of headlight bulbs are intermittent and a timing belt is slightly out of whack.

OK I will take a gamble, they will be completely honest & only mention stuff that needs attention.

My local Kwik Fit is very good.

They tried to fail my wife’s car for having an air fresher hanging from the rear view mirror!!

Blimey, £20 for an MOT? That’s cheap. I just booked the wifes into the local Halfords autocentre for £27.50 which I thought was cheap. Been using them for the last few years, they do try it on a little bit but they’re not pushy.

Got me on the brakes – “The pads are very worn, and the rotors are worn also, so we need to replace everything”

“Sure, go ahead – you replaced them two months ago, so it’ll all be under warranty”

Funnily enough, they decided they didn’t need replacing after all.

It must be a bit depressing to work in a place where you’re automatically and unfairly judged to be a crook. Sure, there’s been dodgy trading practices at Kwik-Fit in the past, but ultimately I’ve never had a bad experience there and they’ve gone out of their way to help me (and others) at my local branch.

Perhaps you should wait until you get it back and see what – if anything – they reckon is wrong with it before you start posting scurrilous statements on t’internet. All you need is a torch and 10 minutes and you can check 95% of MOT items yourself before you take it in.

And “you’r”? Really? http://theoatmeal.com/comics/misspelling

brake pads, discs and shock absorbers.

It’s £20 because they want to get you in there to be fleeced on the above. Same goes for “free safety checks”.

I would say it’s actually borderline fraud.

I’m going with rear brake light bulb needs replacing. I had this with Kwikfit (£10).

They tried to fail my wife’s car for having an air fresher hanging from the rear view mirror!!

Technically anything over 40mm in the swept area of windscreen should be an MOT failure die to it “obstructing the view”

some more info here linky

Why on earth take it there then? To save £20? I’d rather take it to someone I trust who’ll give it the proper going over and give honest advice. 🙄

Why on earth take it there then? To save £20? I’d rather take it to someone I trust who’ll give it the proper going over and give honest advice.

@ £20 that’s clearly a loss leader. They are almost honour bound to find something for your fiscal attention! If you view an Mot as both a legal requirement and an opportunity to make sure at least some elements of the car are vaguely safe I’d rather pay full whack and have someone I can trust give me an honest appraisal.

BREAKING NEWS:

They won’t test it as it has no rear seats in.

Been there years ago, new brake cylinders, old ones leaking, new seals also leking, worn brake pads and drums along with pads,serious corrosion on cills,dodgy clutch cylinder, leaking,worn bushes on suspension,and the bloody heap of scap wouldnt start, so we had to push it off the ramp and theres yor keys back.

Great customer disservice.

Took it to another garage and it passed with a failed numberplate bulb, tha\ts british leyland engineering for you, great car was the ITAL, had 4 of them.

I’d rather take it to someone I trust who’ll give it the proper going over and give honest advice

Same here

How much to put rear seats in? 😀 MG innit?

Why no rear seats?

I’ve got to go and ahve an argument with my local tyre place in a bit. They’ve managed to break two pressure sensors, despite me telling htem to be careful, and are claiming they were already broken ;-(

did you ask him on what grounds they wont test if due to no rear seats ?

kwikfit policy – cause it aint owt to do with the mot….

or is it cause its no good to rag on the lunch run to maccy Ds with the lads ?

They have to test all fitted seatbelts are fitted, inertia works etc. So its sensible to refuse to carry out a test if they are there and the seats aren’t (ie incomplete).

Technically anything over 40mm in the swept area of windscreen should be an MOT failure die to it “obstructing the view”

This would be good advice for those drivers who think sticking a massive sat nav in the window somehow makes it a heads up display.

BREAKING NEWS:

They won’t test it as it has no rear seats in.

Then remove the rear seats belts as well. If no seats and rear belts then it is not classed as a seating position. Competition cars often have no rear seats and no rear belts but have to pass their MOT all the same if being used on the public roads.

“They have to test all fitted seatbelts are fitted, inertia works etc. So its sensible to refuse to carry out a test if they are there and the seats aren’t (ie incomplete).
“

only if bits of the seatbelt are missing….. not the seat.

It’s not just MOT centres… my local VW dealer has just tried to tell me my Passat discs need replacing, they have done 33,000 miles and are just beginning to show a visible ridge around the outside. I shall use the suggestion posted above and invite them to replace the discs under warranty as they are obviously sub-standard.

globalti I had a puncture not so long ago. The wheel would NOT come off. Full stop. The steel wheel was rust-bonded to the steel hub. In the end I refitted the nuts loosely and drove round in a circle until the bond ‘cracked’. The strange thing is the car had been serviced the day before and I was told the front discs/pads were ‘70%’ worn.

I said ‘err no ta’ and then wondered….how did they measure the wear?

The other front wheel? The tyre spanner people had a look- it was also bonded with surface rust but not as bad- they (and me) think neither wheel had been off since the car was new out of the factory..

It’s not just Kwikfit, my dad’s local place are right scumbags, every year there’s some shenanigans. Frexample I had a look through the past tests last time, every single time he’s taken a car there it’s “needed” new wiper blades, even though he barely drives these days…

hora – Member

I said ‘err no ta’ and then wondered….how did they measure the wear?

Front wheel? Turn the steering wheel to gain access. Doesn’t always give you good access mind, depends on the car and wheels.

stick it on the ramps – youll be surprised what you see

especially on the cigarette packet on wheels that is the c1 and its derivitives with the castor wheels

Ah right. Theres me thinking they took the wheel off to use a measuring device on the pads to be that accurate.

They have to test all fitted seatbelts are fitted, inertia works etc

i thought if you had car seats fitted they did not test as they were not insured to re fit them after the test and were liable…it could be a childs face etc…got told this a while ago though

My only advice is never go to the same place twice

if you are a one off they cannot be sure that you are not doing a spot check from VOSA i you go every year they can.

Devils advocate- you’ve broken one of the seats in your car (it reclines etc so for the test you’ve simply removed it).

Another devils advocate, the car is listed as a 5seater on the vehicle information. Its got 5 seatbelts but only 2 complete seats.

Would you still test it? Using common sense alone.

I took mine to a VW dealer, was told the rear numberplate light didnt work and it was not a bulb problem. Fair enough I thought, wasnt happy though because it had some aftermarket chrome on which I would need to replace. Took the old one home, put a battery across it just to check, one worked one didnt swapped the bulb over ooo now the other one worked.

Went back to the dealer with my ‘test rig’to question their procedures, didnt have to pay for the new housing and they reimbursed me the cost of the new chrome.

just on the seatbelt thing, I alway’s get a note on mine saying they could not test the rear seat belts because they have kids seats fitted. They never fail it because they didnt test them.

Weird their own site says nothing about the rear seats: http://www.kwik-fit.com/mot-test.asp#sea