Print Your MOT Certificate at Home!

Did you know that the DVSA has recently given YOU, the motorist, the capability to reprint your MOT certificate? This means you can do a reprint from home and don’t need to travel to your local MOT station saving you time, and - on average - saves you a £10 reprint fee. This means if you’re selling a vehicle or need a copy for any other reason the panic of “what safe place have I lost it in”, has gone.  You are now able to get hold of your MOT certificate in PDF format and see other historic MOTs (including pass and fails details) from the comfort of your sofa. The system is quite simple, all you need is your vehicle’s registration number and the 11-digit reference from V5C. We were keen to see how the process worked and went through the motions of getting our hands on one of the director’s car’s MOT certificate. We were equipped with the registration and the V5C reference number, the system was self-explanatory, and we were able to save a PDF version of the certificate and see the MOT history.

• Visit the Gov website to get your vehicle’s MOT certificate in minutes.

Something else also caught our eye. Below the MOT section was a section called;

'Outstanding Vehicle Recalls.

With anticipation we clicked through, hoping we wouldn’t have to deliver bad news if we found it had been recalled. Fortunately, we were in the clear, big green letters letting us know that there were no outstanding recalls. Keen to see if the information or message changed depending on the vehicle, we checked another car. Being under a year old we knew there would be no MOT information but still wanted to have a look. As expected, no MOT info, but in the recall section, it showed in big red letters that it had a recall dated for the very day we checked. We contacted the nearest dealership to get some more information about the recall, we had to make sure it wouldn’t spontaneously combust…! We needn’t have worried about exploding cars, it was a software update, relating to the start/stop system. But image if it had been a larger system update, relating to a safety feature. Would it have taken an accident to prompt an owner to check their car, or would they just have to wait for the snail mail to eventually show up on the doormat.

Knowing about recalls is important

We suppose with the recently highly publicised vehicle recalls (…we’re looking at you Vauxhall) that the general public might start taking a more proactive approach to investigating any recalls, but what if Joe Bloggs doesn’t check his status once a month. Manufacturers across the board from automotive to household appliances have a history of neglecting to communicate effectively. Hopefully these types of systems will encourage motorists to take the initiative and Vauxhall Zarifa-gate serves as a warning that it’s well worth keeping an eye on motoring news & checking your vehicle’s status. TerraClean is UK leading experts in engine carbon cleaning service, pop your postcode in above to find your nearest dealer!