The pre MOT check has quietly died, and most of us know exactly why
Written anonymously by a Garage Insider
It was once a perfectly sensible service. A customer asks you to check the car over before test day, you put it on the ramp, give it a proper look, spot the obvious problems and help them avoid a fail. It felt useful. It felt fair. In many garages, it was also easy to sell.
Now it is awkward.
The issue is not that the work has changed. The issue is the maths. Labour rates have risen, as they had to. Wages are up. Overheads are up. Training, equipment, energy, software, insurance, everything costs more. Yet the MOT fee has stood still for so long that it has made the old pre MOT conversation feel almost ridiculous.
A proper pre MOT check takes workshop time. In a decent independent garage, that means charging your real hourly rate. For many businesses now, that means the pre MOT inspection costs well over £100, while the MOT itself still sits at £54.85. So you are left trying to explain to a customer why one check costs more than double the other, even though both are linked to the same outcome.
That is where it all starts to fall apart.
It must make customers stutter. You can almost hear the question before they ask it. What is the difference? And the answer sounds weak even when it is true. “Sorry madam, the only real difference is the pricing structure. One reflects the actual cost of skilled labour. The other is capped.”
That is not an easy thing for a front desk team to defend. It is even harder when, from the customer’s point of view, it sounds like you are charging more for the optional bit than the official test itself.
Years ago, people used to ask all the time, can you check it over for its MOT? It was normal. It led naturally into a bit of preparation work and often into extra sales. But those conversations seem to have faded. Not because customers no longer want reassurance, but because the numbers no longer make sense in a way that feels comfortable to either side of the counter.
And if you outsource MOTs, it gets worse.
Imagine inspecting the vehicle in house at your labour rate, then sending it elsewhere for the actual test at a fixed fee that leaves very little margin. Add in transport, admin and the risk of looking expensive before the test has even happened, and the whole thing starts to feel commercially daft.
This is the part some people will not like. A lot of garages have probably stopped pushing pre MOT checks because they are no longer viable, not because they are no longer valuable. There is a big difference. The service still has merit. The economics do not.
That leaves garages with a choice. Either charge properly and risk the customer thinking you are taking the mickey, or blur the cost into the MOT process and quietly give time away. Neither option is especially attractive.
The real problem is that the MOT fee no longer reflects the world garages actually operate in. And until that changes, the old style pre MOT check will keep disappearing from decent workshops.
Do you still get asked for pre MOT checks, and what do you do?