The big problem for the test centres now with the computer system is one of reduced income.

My cousin has a mot garage which my garage uses.Before computerisation with doing trade mot,s he could comfortably do 3 per hour especially on 3 to 6 year old stuff.[Alot of them were from a Honda dealer and Hondas just do not fail!!!].The ministry say 50 minutes but of course had no way of checking.Alot in one day could be argued over a extended working day etc.This resulted in him earning £100/hr just from mot,s

Know of course your average garage monkey who cant type has 48 mins from logging on to do the test. The computer won,t give a pas or fail ticket before the 48 mins is up even though he may have finished in 20/30 mins.If you have one mot bay only one tester can be logged in at a time so you can,t get round it that way either. The garage is then down to £35/45 per hour from mots which can add up to a significant loss over a working day as the new ticket has a issue time on it.Unless the tester is prepared to be logging on all night there is only so many hours in a day.

The next problem is retests.A minor infringement like tyres if done within 24 hrs can be done on a fastrack system usually for no fee.however they can only be done between tests an again eat into the garages log on time.Any more serious failures will require a full retest and again for the garage a full 48 min log on.If the garage doesn,t charge you in full for a retest he is being very generous with his time and wallet now.

I wouldnot like to own a mot only no repairs type of garage at the moment thats for sure!Very difficult situation really.Be aware as well that the mot has a test time on it .So if you get stopped and get a producer then get yourself tested before you would get away with it but now they no what time it passed.Big Brother is out there:ninja:

being an mot tester i though i would enlighten, the computerised test takes no longer to complete than the old manual system. VOSA say the average time taken to test a vehicle is 48 minutes this is an estimate, the computer system has no time restrictions with regards to when a test result can be printed.
i would imagine that you were turned away because at most test stations fully prebook the day , and any test that followed would be started late leading to complaints from the next customers.