Dot Mot

I recently had a disturbing experience with Dot Mot. I had heard a few good reviews about the garage from family members and made my mind up that they were the place to go for the MOT on my car (2003 Renault Clio).
After booking my car in and having a nice, friendly and reassuring chat with one of the mechanics, I made arrangements to pick the car back up in an hour after it’s test.
An hour later I received a phone call from Dot Mot. The car had failed it’s MOT on 7 items. I thought this was ok as the car is over 10 years old and does a few miles to and from work. I then went down to the garage to get a quote for the work to be done and almost choked when the proposed bill was £450 to £500, with an advisory oil leak fix which could have brought the total bill to £700.
After a mini scare story from the mechanic about the oil leak, I agreed to leave the car with the garage so that they could steam clean the underneath of the car to locate the oil leak and give me a more accurate quote. I was to be charged £30 for the clean down.
After all was agreed I was asked to pay the fee for the MOT which was £54.85, which I have since found out to be the maximum amount a garage is allowed to charge (set by government) for an MOT. At the time I thought it was a little expensive as many garages will offer £29 for a test and a free re-​test.
When I returned home I had a chat with my partners dad who advised me to ‘go and get the car back immediately, as he knew a garage who would not charge a for the clean down to find an oil leak’.
So off I popped down to Dot Mot to collect my car. Within a few days I had the car looked at by the other garage and I was very disturbed to find out, that the car was incredibly un-​safe due to a ‘broken track rod end’, which was NOT identified by Dot Mot. Along with this, I was told on my Dot Mot certificate that my «rear brake ferrule» needed replacing, which did not and was lightly corroded and an advisory.
The other garage has since made all the fixes to my car and even put it in for an mot which it passed for a total of £180.
Hopefully others will have a more pleasant experience with dot mot, but I will unfortunately not be using them again.