If you can even get one…
I tend to use an MOT testing station that does nothing else and have no affiliations with any garage. There are a few to choose from locally and there is nothing in it for them by overstating any defects. I have used the same one for the last 3 years at £45 per time and no problems.
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Yes good point, the one near me belonged to the local bus company but long gone now.
It is the freedom to use inappropriate language that annoys me because as the op states this then becomes part of the MOT history.
Not a problem for me as mine is a keeper, however if buying one may be excused from wondering when the history goes from rotten floor to a pass in a few day/weeks.
Dave
Did he not take it to the garage for an appointment to get the Hand brake adjusted ?
maybe i read it wrong.
I personally as has already been mentioned would have put it in for test first to see if anything else was wrong , and thats what the DVSA recommend as it gives a true statistic of the cars that are on the road that would fail before repair .
Yeah I knew the handbrake would cause an issue so I asked for the handbrake to be adjusted then get it tested. I was pretty comfortable with everything else on the car as a lot as been replaced or at the very least inspected in the last year and it’s been parked in a garage for 5 months or so.
If that’s standard practice fair enough, but I think they should have let me know first.
Seeing that lot on MOT history would mean I wouldn’t go and view the car…
The repairs have been done a while ago now. The drivers side was bubbling, but the paint not broken; rust wasn’t actually visible. But I knew how bad it was going to be, and just took a flapper to see. The drivers side showed a small bleb on the sill, about where that inner sill welded patch is. I instructed the garage to replace both arches and sills. Ironically, with the outerpanel off, the inner arch was in a worse state than the drivers side, despite looking fine.
The exercise demonstrated that sometimes you shouldn’t read too much into a MOT “history”. Prior rust repairs is helpful to see how well, as much as you can, repairs were done. But an absence of mentions of rust should not be a reason for a seller to increase the asking price.
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I always use the local Council test station. Honest and thorough, and if asked, do not recommend any garage for work that might need doing.
I agree with the OP, MOT history is the first thing I look at when seeing a car for sale I might be interested in, and on a MX5 rust and corrosion will be very off putting and as another poster said would prob stop me proceeding any further with it.
A good garage should do as you ask, as you are paying them. My wife’s car needed new tyres last year and I got the garage to fit them first then mot it. They did just that, I would of been really pis$Ed off if they had mot’d it first when I specifically asked them to fit tyres first. That would be very short sighted on their behalf as I would find a new garage.
Luckily mine seems to be one of the better ones who actually listens to their customers
About 10 years ago, I bought an old Peugeot 106. I’d recently moved to the area, and hadn’t yet worked out which local garages were honest, competent, and reasonably priced. When the MOT came due I took it to the nearest garage, which was a Ford dealer. The car failed on a loose driver’s seat. That was correct. There was though, on the sheet, about 15 advisories. It was ridiculous. About the only thing that didn’t receive an advisory was the new gleaming silencer box that I’d fitted myself a fortnight previously. I had the MOT histories from the previous owner, and the only advisories had been things like suspension bushes, brake pads getting low. The usual kind of thing on an older car.
Forunately this was before the government came out with the MOT History Check, or smartphone apps like Vehicle Smart, Car-Check etc.
In the end , I concluded that part of the problem might be that the dealer was used to local people, having bought a new Ford there, would likely normally return there for their MOT at 3 years old. And even a Ford would still look pristine inside, outside and underneath at 3 years old. So me showing up with my oldish Peugeot would probably be quite a shock for them.
Anyway, I never returned there, and eventually found a local garage that didn’t inflate bills, did the work when they said they would, was used to working on older cars, and knew what, on an older car, was reasonable to report as an advisory at MOT time. .
When I check MOT history and see failures for things like handbrake adjustment, worn tyres or lights not working, I assume that the owner is not bothering to properly service their vehicle. Relying on an MOT test to flag up faults seems a very lazy way of looking after a vehicle.
I have every sympathy with the original poster.
I used to think that but now if you drop you car in for a service and MOT they will do the MOT first which can result in service parts flagging as fails on the MOT!
I had that this year when I knew and asked them to fit new tyres, only for the to fail it before fitting the new tyres 
If there is corrosion then why are you surprised it’s down as an advisory ? Pretty much Any MOT tester is going to advise if it’s there,
For me the word corrosion kills a car stone dead. I like many look at MOT history before going to view a car. If the C word is mentioned I move on.
I’m a bit surprised you were so conscientious about the handbrake adjustment but not about corrosion? Surely the easiest and best route would have been to sort it before the test not after ?
Even if you sort it and re MOT it the history is there and cannot be removed.
An MOT tester I know fairly well told me that in recent times VOSA have become suspicious why some testing stations tend to pass a relatively high number of vehicles with no advisories…might have been due to certain VOSA staff changes or based on national statistics.
Make of that what you will, but I understand where he was coming from. Like in most things, regulations for everything seem to get ever more and more involved.
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More or less what I have heard, advisories are used to “balance the books”.
Parts of the MOT include tests that garages who do not carry out MOTs find difficult to test themselves.Hence I think increasingly cars are MOT’d before any service work to see what needs doing.
My late 2018 3 Series BMW technically has corrosion on or around the exhaust, no mention of that on the MOT a few weeks ago and I certainly wouldn’t have expected to see it there either.
My issue clearly was with the wording “heavily corroded in parts” which it was not. Any other professional inspector in any industry (not MOT) would not get away with that such a sloppy description.
It’s shocking if it’s true that VOSA are looking for more advisories to be added. Personally I think it’s very reasonable for advisories to become less common given the car scrappage scheme and cars being built better than they used to.
Anyway, after a lot of inspection, the only notable corrosion was on things like the suspension arms which was rectified after 2-3hrs with a wire brush, some Kurust and some paint… “heavily corroded” my a*se.
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I know plenty BMW owners have had replacement exhaust tips under warranty because of corrosion. Your late 2018 car will be under warranty until late 2021, so if you are that way inclined…
I took mine off steel wooled them, and sprayed with black vht paint and they lasted well.
Round here one garage offers MOTs, but actualy takes them to a local MOT center. One of the ones they use, used to give the advisories on a sticky note, and never log it on the MOT system. The last few years I’ve noticed no sticky notes but advisories on the system, so maybe VOSA had a few words…
THANKS MARTIN For Link
Always Kept Her History in Paper Form But On-Line History So Much Easier To See
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Surely It’s About the Level of Corrosion and If It’s in Advisory Then The Vehicle is Safe to Drive
I Don’t Know the Mechanical Reason Why - But the Handbrake on My 2.5 Icon Needs Tightening on Current [350-500] Mileage Every Two Years
The Garage That Has Done My MOT for the Last Few Years Has Experience of Me and the Vehicle
Including Pre & Post Me Replacing Her Arches & Sills [Done at an Expert MX5 Garage]
Indeed They Tightened Her Handbrake BEFORE her MOT this Year !
ULTIMATELY SURELY FOR ANY MOT TESTER IT’S A JUDGEMENT CALL
and
TRUST
and
HONEST COMMUNICATION
AND LITERALLY WHETHER THE CAR IS SAFE TO DRIVE ON THE ROAD
DOH !
I Trust Them to Give Me Honest Feedback and They Trust Me Not to Drive an Unsafe Vehicle