MOT fees: what you can charge, and what you cannot

The MOT is the one job in your workshop where the ceiling on your price is set by law. That makes it the easiest thing in the world to quote confidently on the phone — provided whoever answers knows the rules.

The statutory maximum fees

GOV.UK publishes the maximum an MOT test station may charge by vehicle class. For a car with up to eight passenger seats (class 4) it is £54.85, and for a standard motorcycle £29.65. VAT is not payable on the fee GOV.UK, MOT costs.

These are maximums, not fixed prices. DVSA's testing guide is explicit that authorised examiners may charge less than the statutory fee for a test, a retest or a duplicate certificate — but the full examination must still be carried out in accordance with the department's requirements regardless of what you charged DVSA, MOT testing guide: accounts and fees.

When a retest must not be charged for

DVSA sets out situations where no retest fee may be charged, including where the vehicle stays at the testing station for the defects to be repaired and is retested before the end of the tenth working day following the initial test. There is also a defined list of minor items — access panels, battery, bonnet, boot lid, doors, electrical wiring, fuel filler cap and others — where a retest at the same station before the end of the next working day of testing carries no additional fee DVSA, MOT testing guide: accounts and fees.

Getting this wrong on the phone is a real risk. An offhand promise of a free retest that does not qualify becomes an awkward conversation at the counter; wrongly charging for one that should have been free becomes a complaint.

Turn it into a script, not a memory test

• State your MOT price as a number, since the ceiling is fixed and public anyway.
• Say what is and is not included, and never promise a free retest on the call without checking the qualifying conditions.
• Quote remedial work only after the car has been seen — a failure list is not a price list.
• Log the registration accurately so the test can be booked against the right vehicle.

This is the same principle we set out in should you quote prices over the phone: price the fixed things precisely, and refuse to price the unseen things at all.

How Garage Ghost handles it

You set your MOT price in the dashboard and the agent quotes that figure and nothing else. Anything beyond a set range — a described noise, a warning light, remedial work following a failure — is booked in and flagged for you to price after inspection. Registrations are read back to the caller character by character and written to the customer record. If you want to know what typically fails, we went through the national figures in what the MOT data actually says about the work coming through your bay.