Anyway!
Learned a lot about how MOTs are policed today!
You may remember I said the guy who answered the phone at the MOT testers wasn't one of the usual blokes?
Well I got there and chatted to the owner who i have known for at least 30 years.
Turns out that during lockdown, when the station was closed and the staff furloughed, the tester who normally did mine, was doing tests on the quiet, he had keys to the place (as MOT manager) and under normal circs this would have gone unnoticed, but VOSA picked it up as an anomaly, due to lockdown. So he was guilty of fraud, both of furlough and of defrauding the garage as he wasn't passing on any of the fees. Normally, when he did them evenings or weekends, he'd put the money under the cash box for the owner to find on a Monday morning.
THEN it turned out he was doing them "away" from the MOT testing place. and one car in particular had been tested and passed even though it hadn't moved from Harwich which obvs is nowhere near Poole! Number plate recognition tech hadn't picked it up in either direction.
So now they knew he was doing bent MOTs.
I thought that the tech was connected direct from the garage but no, apparently not any more. Now, with just their card, an MOT tester can log on anywhere and give a pass to anyone! Mad!
We discussed his motivation for doing this as he had no mortgage, no wife, no kids, no need that we knew of.
But he did give about 3 different reasons for doing it, one of which was that he had done an MOT for one or more "travelling people" and it looked as if subsequently they had him by the nuts.
They looked into his log and it went back so far he is into it all for tens of thousands.
So he'll probably end up inside.
So strange, as I have known this bloke for well over 20 years. and in fact my last MOT last year, for Wifey's car, may have been one of the last he did.
And the garage owner treated him so well, he was even going to leave the garage to him in his will, as he has no kids either. £300 to add a codicil to his will to remove this!
Made for an interesting MOT!
Rest of the day was also fun.......