NCTS Complaint

 Dear NCTS,

I am writing to complain about the NCTS and ask for a correction of your certificate award system. You deliver a rigorous test, justified by the responsibility of awarding a certificate that confirms a vehicle can be expected to be road-worthy for a year. Unless, you are another unashamed, thieving, money-spinning racket, then the certificate should really always be for a year, don’t you think?

 

Awarding a certificate for three months because ‘it is computer generated from the birthday of your car’ seems to me a rather strange and sudden reliance on artificial intelligence, when the rest of your system  utilizes the minds of men to do the assessment. 

 

Looking at it from a motorist’s point of view – which your computer didn’t do and your test centre worker’s couldn’t manage either – it is quite clearly unfair and totally arbitrary. There are the costs of the test and the re-test, following recommendations and requirements being carried out. They seem reasonable. There is the cost of the work to be done, on cars that have sat mainly idle for over a year, due to restrictions. I, for one, paid €1,100 for the parts and work my car needed. Fair enough.

 

But don’t tell me then that my certificate does not count for a year. I request that your future certificates cover the one year period from the day a car passes its test. Do you fear, perhaps, that car owners will get a few days’ free? In addition to the work preparation for the test, there was another €250 to be paid before the re-test. I don’t call that free. And it certainly isn’t the business of the NCTS to penalize and lengthen and shorten the time their certificates stand for. It shouldn’t be within their remit anyway.

 

Thank you. Please sort this out.

Yours, Frances Micklem