How to Prepare for Your MOT or Service Appointment
Here at Queens Park Garage, we try to help as many people as we can in our community and we often have busy days full of back to back appointments. Sometimes when we confirm appointment booking requests, we have to account for the time it will take to get a vehicle set up at the start of the allotted time for the MOT or Service, and this includes a multitude of tasks:
- Removing items that obstruct the area of the vehicle we need to work in, such as removing things from the boot of the car if we need to access a spare tyre
- Cleaning parts of or all of the vehicle if there is excess dirt which prevents us from getting to the parts that we need to service or repair
- Retrieving the customer’s service book ready to fill in
- Retrieving the lock in wheel nut key which is needed when we need to remove tyres and wheels for changing or to get to other parts of the vehicle
- Removing things from the boot of the car if we need to access a spare tyre, to check for corrosion or examine the suspension.
Only once we have completed these things do we then have to prepare our personal protective equipment and start the job.
We wanted to provide a useful, quick-fire list of how to prepare for your vehicle servicing or MOT appointment to help reduce the contact we have with your personal belongings and also to help free up more time so we can help fix as many vehicles as we can – and we greatly appreciate your help.
Checklist of how to prepare your vehicle for a garage appointment
1. Remove personal belongings from your vehicle
Check the front seats, back seats and boot of the car. If we find things that obstruct the areas that we need to do our job, we look after them well and return them to the car afterwards, but we don’t take responsibility for the loss or damage of these items whilst they are in the garage and ask that you remove them prior to dropping off your vehicle.
2. Make sure your vehicle is clean
We understand that car cleaning is an annoying job that many of us often struggle to have time for, but when we get vehicles into the garage that are ‘cleaner’, it makes our job so much easier and we are eternally grateful, especially if you are in a rush and need the repairs or servicing done fairly quickly!
Whilst we do take pride in making sure our customers vehicles get returned in the best possible condition, unless pre-agreed, cleaning is not included in the price of our MOT’s… sorry! Though do feel free to ask us about cleaning as we can include this service at an extra charge.
3. Please have your service book and locking wheel nut to hand
Most people keep their service book in the glove compartment or in a folder somewhere in the car. However, sometimes this doesn’t happen and we are unable to locate it. If your service book is tidily tucked away in a filing cabinet at home, please don’t forget to bring it to us when you drop off your car.
And if you also know the location of your locking wheel nut which is unique to every car, a sort of key for taking off your wheels, this will avoid us having to delay the work to your vehicle or having to change the wheel nut if the other one cannot be located – which can be costly.
4. Please have your key ready
Please have your key ready for us with no additional keyrings attached when you drop off your vehicle.
Following these steps will help to prevent any delays or costly mistakes, such as losing your wheel nut or service book which are difficult to replace. We recommend that you go an have a look for these at your earliest convenience and make a note of where they are kept so that when your next MOT comes around, you can hand them to us right away, safe in the knowledge that those essential items will remain in a safe place.
As always, we thank every one of our customers for choosing Queens Park Garage where we aim to deliver the best possible service, for the best value. For more information or if you have any questions about our MOT’s and services or repairs, please feel free to give us a call to speak to one of our friendly team on 01202 216 104 or contact us online. You can request a booking for service or MOT or other repair services using our online booking form.
