Oh dear... Go back and read your own post... Especially the bit where you claim the tester said: "...he would let me off for £10"
MOT emissions fail.
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If he says he said no such thing, do I beat him up until he confesses?Oh dear... Go back and read your own post... Especially the bit where you claim the tester said: "...he would let me off for £10"
Nothing better to do except sit on DIYnot all day! 
You report it to DVSA and you let their own inspectors worry about deciding whether it was true or not!
You are basically saying rather than spending my time building boxes, I should go talk to the DVLA instead, who might report me to police for making false allegations?
You seem very worried, all of a sudden, about going down for making false allegations? Do you have anything to hide? In less than the time you've spent, replying to this very thread, you could have done it:
Report an MOT tester
Find out if you can report an MOT tester or centre for fraud, how to report them (including without giving your name), and what will happen next.
They are separate printers. The emissions machine and the mot computer have their own dedicated printers.
If you report something to the DVLA, and if they get similar reports from others about the same garage, they will set up an undercover operation.
Used to know a bloke in Liverpool who worked for the DVLA at the time, so would be about 15-20 years ago.
This could involve a car, (known to be unpassable by a small margin), being taken for test and observing what happens. If it passes with recommendations, they may let 'that' car go. But they will take other car(s) through, with varying faults, over a period of time to see if anything is 'amiss'. Obviously they will also use different people to take in the various cars, though they have been known to use the same person up to 3 times by claiming one for him, one for wife and one for teenage child. Because they cars are owned by DVSA they have 'dummy' details that will show them as genuine if anyone tries to check their records.
Used to know a bloke in Liverpool who worked for the DVLA at the time, so would be about 15-20 years ago.
This could involve a car, (known to be unpassable by a small margin), being taken for test and observing what happens. If it passes with recommendations, they may let 'that' car go. But they will take other car(s) through, with varying faults, over a period of time to see if anything is 'amiss'. Obviously they will also use different people to take in the various cars, though they have been known to use the same person up to 3 times by claiming one for him, one for wife and one for teenage child. Because they cars are owned by DVSA they have 'dummy' details that will show them as genuine if anyone tries to check their records.
Did you drive it like you stole it? I'm a very careful driver and never work my engines - especially when cold. Except once a year. Just before the MOT my old Scudo van (2.0 HDi) is allowed to warm up properly, then gets a sound thrashing. Involving making the engine work hard and keeping it in low gears far longer than normal. Then a blast down the M5. Start of the process sees some quite thick black smoke from the tailpipe - but once this is out, it doesn't happen again as a lot of it is cleaned out. Straight after the motorway blast, the van is taken into MOT station. That's how you want the engine, cleared out and fully warmed up. My emission reading are always excellent.
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And you breathe the same air..Next time, scratch, remove or paint over that section of the manufacturers plate then they'll have to use the default measurements.
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I am sort of guessing that you are not on George Monbiot's Christmas card list?
Yes, I'm the same, the "extended test drive" is from the instructions on the Forte product and is clearly a euphemism for giving it a good thrashing - lots of hard uphill acceleration in 2nd and 3rd gear - the problem is that I, and I suspect most other people, don't really understand what the thing is testing for -
is it the products of incomplete combustion, bits of something in the combustion chamber, injectors, egr, catalytic converter, exhaust (mine doesn't have a dpf)? The only time whatever crap is in there comes out is when the bloke at the MOT place revs the knacker's off it!
I've never previously had a problem as until last year, the test was done on the default values (see below) and my post 2008 cars would get around 1.2 and so pass - but now they're using plate values and mine is 1 so is a fail or borderline.
I don't know why the limit for my car is lower than the maximum allowed for a vehicle of that age, presumably some EC regulation and for all I know the best it could manage when brand new was maybe 0.75? obviously VW don't care that that my perfectly good, well maintained 15 year old car with 88k on the clock is struggling.
Your old Scudo is probably the same age as my old 2004 Berlingo Hdi - bumbled around town but never failed, not because it was particularly clean but because the test limit was 3 times higher - I always uses to chuck that printout away when it passed but I wonder now what sort of readings I was getting?
MOT limits:
1. First used before July 2008 None turbo 2.5m-1 or plate value if lower
Turbo 3.0m-1 or plate value if lower
2. First used on or after 1 July 2008 All diesels 1.5m-1 or plate value if lower
Unfortunately I believe this loophole has now closed and the manufacturers emmisions data has been uploaded onto the MOT computer. Otherwise I would have had no reservations about taking advantage - I know that two wrongs don't make a right but any government that actually allows wealthy people to drive around in completely unnecessary gigantic polluting vehicles in return for money deserves to be cheated.
I change tester every few years when the tester gets comfortable enough to try something. The places I have seen have one printer. Maybe they hide the second printer somewhere. Seems unlikely because some of the offices are small. Even if they have multiple printers, how would they change a fail to a pass? Manipulating the probe during test is possible. But changing the result after the test would not be possible. This kind of hacking ability would be beyond them.
I am hiding the fact I have better things to do. If a tester wants to do a holdup for £10, he can have it. But he gets no more business. In the end he loses more than he gains. I usually pick places where the price is keen. I still save money even if I have to pay extra on one occasion.
Investigations mean more personnel and higher road tax. I would end up paying one bunch of people instead of another. My wallet won't know the difference. The tester would try something after a few years when he's sure you are not from the DVLA. So, the DVLA won't be catching anyone. More likely they would want to catch you for wasting their time and framing one of their members.
Anyway back to the injector cleaners. I don't think they work given that the less than savoury testers are pushing them. My 19 year old petrol never had a cleaner and its emissions are perfect every time. It was perfect even on that occasion when it "failed". Hence, the panicked look on the tester's face when I asked for a copy of the report.
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When you report someone to the DVLA, (or whatever they call themselves these days), you don't pay anything. You are simply reporting a suspected fraud. It's their decision to investigate or not and they decide if the case merits looking in to. They will consider things like cost implications to carry it out, whether they have a good chance of winning and getting at least some of their money back through penalties etc
The person caught and convicted would never be allowed to MOT test again, (unless they changed their identity and qualifications or some other way). The garage, even if wholly unaware of what was happening/happened, would also be penalised and could lose their testers licence.
The person caught and convicted would never be allowed to MOT test again, (unless they changed their identity and qualifications or some other way). The garage, even if wholly unaware of what was happening/happened, would also be penalised and could lose their testers licence.
You pay indirectly through tax. Since you are paying, maybe they would put a 20 people team on the case. £10 seems cheaper.