MOT rant

[tearinyourhand]

My car is due an MOT. I'm in N Ireland so it's government run, not done at a garage. Letter received yesterday. They have stopped accepting bookings online, you can only do it by phone.

Ring the phone line and... they're not accepting calls at present. What the hell?

Oh God, that's annoying. They're probably overwhelmed because wasn't there a fault with all the ramps that stopped people getting MOTs for a while?

Because I'm bloody minded, I'd be tempted to write back to them and ask what they want you to do. Or are you able to visit a test centre in person to make an appointment?

I'm slightly worried about my MOT (company car just coming up to 3 YO (in England, that's the rule here) that I need to take for an MOT before it is returned in a few weeks and they're saying there will be a shortage of appointments because MOTs were paused during lockdown and now there will be double the demand for the rest of the year.

My lovely lovely local garage rang me to say that my MOT was coming due and they were anticipating a rise in demand, did I want to get mine in early and beat the rush?

I took them some chocolates in for their consideration.

No help to you, OP, just to show that some garages really do go the extra mile for their customers!

@Zaphodsotherhead

My lovely lovely local garage rang me to say that my MOT was coming due and they were anticipating a rise in demand, did I want to get mine in early and beat the rush?

I took them some chocolates in for their consideration.

No help to you, OP, just to show that some garages really do go the extra mile for their customers!

It would be really handy to be able to go to a garage as obviously I could just vote with my feet and go elsewhere.