Driving test booking

[TeenToTwenties]

Just watched an article on BBC1 about bots booking up driving tests and selling them on.

Isn't the obvious solution to book a slot with a provisional driving licence number and the test has to be taken by that person or 3lse cancelled?

That would be easy to program wouldn't it?

There are plenty of fairly cowboy operatives out there who will do variations on this approach (usually without explaining), either not giving a toss at all about when the test will be, or trying to spin that they can get a cancellation and then not giving a toss when they don't.

Yes, I spoke to a million of them. They try to sell you an intensive course with a test at the end and in a lot of places, you can get a 'short date' cancellation within three days because a lot of people make the decision three days before their test.

But not where I live with the closed down test centre so there were a lot of flustered salesmen on my phone, telling me that 'their company' didn't have any tests at this exact moment but one would absolutely come up once if booked the £70 an hour intensive course.

All they are doing is looking at the same .gov website we can all look at .

I paid for the Testi app again (which I'd used successfully with my older child) and it was blocked.

Tests are released at exactly 6am on a Monday if that's useful information to anyone.

The two hour lesson thing infuriates me.
It is just creating cognitive overload.
I have a masters in education and I don’t see why driving instructors think pedagogy doesn’t apply to them.
I get that you might not come up against certain things on the road but surely that means you need to plan routes better.
Thankfully we found an instructor happy to do 1 hour lessons. 2 hours at further gaps is not helpful to learning due to the way new knowledge drops over time.

Both my DC passed with a very successful local company. They have so many customers in their books that as soon as you turn 17, they use their licence number to book a test, knowing that they will be able tonswao around whoever actually takes the test nearer the time if you are not ready. It works really well & when one of my DC failed for a silly reason on their 1st test, they were able to re-take & pass 2 weeks later as he swapped another person's test around as they weren't ready. It works well for companies like this but they only charge the price of the test, no added extras.

You can’t even apply for a test before doing the theory though?

I don't think the pp meant only instructors could book tests, I think they meant only instructors should be able to book tests for other people.

That might be true for you, but with a masters in education, one might hope you would appreciate that individuals learn differently and that different circumstances affect how learning is best achieved.

We live in a rural area. It takes 25 minutes by car to reach the town where DD will take her test. What use would a 1 hour lesson be if the reality of that is actually 10 minutes max on the sorts of roads and traffic conditions she needs to learn to pass her test?

@TheCompactPussycat yes I agree. I’m learning to drive and we’re very rural. Our nearest test centre is 45 minutes away, in an hour lesson I would cover rural country roads but not large roundabouts or dual carriage ways, or busy town centre roads.

It's a ridiculous system.
Ds just booked.

He had to get up Monday 6am to be in with a chance. He was in on the dot of 6 and 12 tests for his test centre showed, all 2nd week of January. You enter all your details, including driving licence, to get in.

We clicked on each test showing available in turn, to be told "this test is booked". But when you went back to the page they all still showed available.

I said to him that it was worth just keeping on clicking on them in order until 6.15 as you get 15 minutes to book it before it kicks you out.
We were really lucky, one of them suddenly took us through and we got it. Someone must have either decided not to book or their computer crashed or something.

But you could go for weeks trying to book under that system and not managing. If fact I know someone who took 8 weeks of Mondays at 6am before they managed

It also means if he fails then he's got another 6 months wait for the next test. His instructor reckons he'll be ready November so we'll be paying for an extra 10 weeks of lessons.

It's not just COVID. Dd2 did her test in 2021/2 and it wasn't anything like that bad (same test centre); you went on the app and booked when you wanted, not a huge choice but choice was there at any time. Her test got cancelled at the last minute by the DVLA and we booked for a fortnight later.

There needs to be a better, and fairer, system in place.

Dd passed recently on her 3rd attempt.
Instructor booked the first test for when she predicted DD would be ready, she was but failed due to a roundabout!!
I rebooked immediately in early June, first date available was mid October but within 2 weeks had managed to get a mid July date via the Testi app.
Failed again, this time I knew the drill, but now a 5 month wait and mid December date, via the app we got to mid September and the a very last minute cancellation at 8pm one night for the next morning - great, no time for nerves and she passed!!
No affiliation to Testi but it worked great for us! You do need to be really ‘on it’ to get the dates. Obviously cancellations come up randomly, I think regular times are released on a Monday morning but Friday about 4pm was also a time when things seemed to be freed up.

So do you have to pay for testi?

Yes, it’s a one off payment of £12 or 13 for the app. Once you have the app you can set test parameters, date and location for searching. Sometimes it pinged with a new date but I spent a lot of time refreshing it, fruitlessly! There was no charge via the app for changing a test booking and there was no charge by the DVSA either, unless you have to pay for a premium weekend slot (£62 for the original test but Saturdays are £75 ish).

Thanks. Looks like testi might be an option. Son is test ready but only has a January date. It's crazy.

@lemonyellows I mentioned upthread that we found someone to swap with via our local Facebook group. It was a lot easier than using an app for notifications. Just pop a post on and ask if anyone has a test in the autumn that they'd like to swap to January.

It's been a nightmare since Covid. I have had 2 children pass their tests since 2020, both times booking the theory was difficult but we got a slot not too far in advance after the initial 2020 madness had passed but the practical was a total farce.

We have a choice of three or four centres within a reasonable distance, we just had to book a slot, any slot, at any centre anywhere in the country and use an app like Testee to let us know when there was a cancellation. Four of us all signed into the same app on our phones, fastest finger first when it came to securing an appointment when it came available.

The advice from local instructors is to book a practical as soon as you have your theory pass, even if it's months in advance as you can always reschedule.

The instructor who taught my son to drive is a member of one of my exercise groups and I was talking to him about this yesterday evening.

The way he does it is book for his pupils (which also means he is around and his car is available - if you book yourself you might not know if you can actually get your instructor's car for that slot). He actually books any slot he can in the country, and then moves them around. And if he has pupils who make slower or faster progress than expected, he swaps their slots around, and might also be able to squeeze someone in who's narrowly failed and doesn't need another six months of lessons. It seems to work quite well but involves a lot of stressful Mondays for him trying to get slots.

Another friend said that her daughter took her test before she was ready but she would have had to wait months for another slot. She actually passed, but she was saying she didn't think it was particularly good for people to be taking tests when their instructors didn't really think they were ready. Although apparently if an instructor has a disproportionate amount of fails, they will be spoken to, whatever that means!

It sounds a similar racket to resellers buying up concert tickets.

I think covid is the major culprit - there were massive backlogs of pupils (a) because they couldn't actually have lessons and (b) because they couldn't get test dates for their theory or practical.

And they just don't have the staff to combat the backlog. I did wonder if they should move the age from 17 to 18 to give themselves a chance to get rid of the backlog but maybe that would just be postponing the problem.

In Scotland we had restrictions for so much longer than the rest of the UK. In spring/summer 2021 things were still not back to normal, loads of kids the same age as DS could not get appointments for theory anywhere in Scotland where they were still enforcing limited numbers and social distancing which meant they could have about 2 or 3 sitting the test at the same time in a room which could accommodate 30. We live in Glasgow, I personally know of kids who had a weekend in London or Brighton and sat their theory there as they couldn't get a slot at home. We had a holiday in Dorset that year, we had planned on getting DS a slot in Weymouth or Exeter if we couldn't get a Scotland slot.

Driving tests were slower to restart in Scotland, then the testers went on strike. Things have eased a bit but there is still a backlog and there doesn't seem to be any plan to get it sorted. Yesterday there was a news piece about campaiging for all people 75 plus to have to resit their test every couple of years. No chance with current capacity.

Dd started by taking her theory test in April. Booked her practical as soon as she got the certificate number, for end of August (not any choice, she took what was available). Didn't manage to get lessons until start July, but is ready now after 2x2hr lessons a week and 90 min with her dad every day. Fingers crossed for the end of the month.

Maybe check the recent reviews for testi to talk to people who have used it in the last couple of months.

I used it without issue with my older dd but it was completely inaccurate when I used it very recently for dd2 and if you click on a test date you want you no longer go to the DVLA website as it's blocked.

I got a refund from Apple.

uk.trustpilot.com/review/testi-app.co.uk

I recently passed but the whole booking does add extra stress and nerves when taking a test as you never know when you'll get another test booked. My instructor booked all his customers tests as soon as they passed the theory. He would then swap tests when needed if a pupil needed longer or someone had failed. It was extra work for him and a faff. He would also swap tests with other local instructors. During my test the examiner said it's been so stressful for them and getting extra staff was a nightmare. There were only 3 examiners at my test centre. I'm so glad I don't have to worry about all that anymore.

Used it twice in the last 2 months and managed to move up both tests by months.

My Dd had her 2nd test booked for January 2025 Dh went on the booking website on Friday night and got her a test for yesterday and she passed with one minor.