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New test booking scheme is a shambles
Page 26
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WHY HAS Commercial Motor not highlighted the shambles that has become VOSA's new scheme for booking HGV test appointments?
In the good old days you used to ring up the test station and within a minute or two get an appointment.
In some cases it was often possible to take a cancellation at short notice.
Now, when you ring the test station they tell to "ring Swanseaand give you an 0870 number.Then you are faced with the usual "press I for..." palaver before the long wait starts.
When your call is answered they take your details and the vehicle details and say they will ring back.
I have been trying to get an appointment for a week now and have made several calls. One lady who took my call on Friday said the system had broken down. She said they had literally hundreds of unanswered booking requests and they had no idea where my particular form was.
I'm lucky, I don't need my test until October —just as the fees go up — but anyone in the queue for a September test might be pushing their luck to get one before the end of the month.
A mechanic friend who works at a local HGV maintenance organisation tells me that they have a number of trailers in the backlog and that it is now no longer possible to pick up any cancellations — all bookings must be made from scratch.
And what is this shambles doing to the workflow through the test stations? It seems to me that there will be a lot of holes in their schedule from now on if cancelled slots cannot be filled at short notice.
Is this another element of the master plan to close the traffic regional offices and make VOSA a massive single call-centre?
Next, no doubt, they will want to contract it all out to somewhere in the Far East.
Bill Taylor Friskney, Boston, Lincolnshire