MOT reminders: the due-date list, the rules, and who else is texting

A garage's most valuable asset is usually a list it has never audited: every vehicle it has seen, with a registration and a date. That list predicts a large share of next year's work, and in most workshops it exists as rows in a management system nobody exports.

Reminders are how you turn it into bookings. The details that decide whether they work are unglamorous: whether the dates are right, whether the timing respects the rules that govern when a test can be done, and whether you have thought about the fact that DVSA is sending its own reminder to the same person.

What we'll cover

• The list is the asset
• What the rules actually set
• You are not the only one reminding them
• Getting the dates right
• Building it with CodeWords
• What a reminder should say
• Service and MOT are different conversations
• Fails, retests and the second decision
• Making it survive
• Limits worth knowing about
• What to build first
• Frequently asked questions

The list is the asset

Before writing a single message, work out what the list actually contains.

How many vehicles have a due date you trust? Not a record, a date you would act on. Most garages find a meaningful share are missing, wrong, or belong to a car sold two years ago.

How many have a mobile number that still works? Landlines and dead numbers are dead rows.

How many have you seen in the last two years? Older than that and you are contacting strangers, which is a different exercise with different rules.

That audit takes an afternoon and changes what you build. A garage with 1,200 records and 400 usable ones has a data problem before it has a messaging problem, and sending to the other 800 damages the channel you are trying to establish.

What the rules actually set

The timing is not a marketing decision, because the regulation already fixes the useful dates.

A vehicle needs its first MOT at three years old and then annually. A test can be done up to a month minus a day before the current certificate expires while keeping the same renewal date, so a certificate expiring on 15 May can be tested from 16 April without losing the anniversary (GOV.UK).

That early window is the single most useful thing to tell a customer, and most do not know it exists. It means a reminder can honestly say "you can book any time from the 16th and keep your date", which converts better than urgency because it gives the customer something they did not have.

It also sets the shape of your sequence. Contact before the window opens is information. Contact during it is a booking request. Contact after expiry is a different message entirely, because the vehicle cannot be driven to the test without meeting one of the narrow exceptions.

You are not the only one reminding them

Worth knowing before you design anything: DVSA runs a free MOT reminder service that texts or emails the registered keeper four weeks and two weeks before the MOT is due (GOV.UK).

Which means a garage sending at 28 days and 14 days is arriving on the same two days as a government message saying the same thing. The customer is not short of reminders that the MOT is due. What they are short of is a slot.

So the job of your message is different from the job of DVSA's. Theirs tells them the date. Yours offers a time, at a place they have been before, with a way to say yes in one reply. Lead with the booking rather than the deadline, and consider staggering off the government's dates rather than onto them.

Getting the dates right

The commonest cause of a bad reminder is a bad date, and there are several ways to get one.

A sold vehicle. The customer sold it in March and hears from you in September about a car they no longer own. Ask, once, and mark the record.

A test done elsewhere. They went somewhere cheaper last year. Your record says one date; the actual certificate says another.

A vehicle tested early. If they used the early window, the anniversary holds. If they tested outside it, the date moved and your record did not.

Class and age exemptions. Not every vehicle is on a standard annual cycle, and a reminder sent about a test that is not due reads as carelessness.

The public MOT history service lets you check the current expiry for a registration, and reconciling your list against it before a send removes most of these. Doing that once a quarter is the highest-value maintenance job on the whole system.

Building it with CodeWords

CodeWords connects to more than 3,000 integrations, and the connection is made once and reused.

1. Open CodeWords and start a new automation.
2. Describe what should happen in plain language to Cody, the automation builder: which vehicles are due when, when each message goes, what it offers, and what stops the sequence.
3. Authorize the connections to your garage management system, your diary, and your WhatsApp Business Platform account.
4. Describe the exceptions: a vehicle already booked, one tested elsewhere, one sold, a customer who has asked not to be contacted, anyone who replies with a question.
5. Run it on one month's worth of due dates before turning it on for the whole list, and check every reply by hand for that first month.

You describe the outcome; Cody builds it, connects it, and deploys it. The free plan covers light use, with Pro at $39 per month and Business at $100 per month as usage grows; details are on the pricing page.

What a reminder should say

Short, specific, and answerable in one word.

The vehicle, by registration. People own more than one car and remember registrations better than they remember service dates.

The date it expires, and the date from which they can test while keeping it.

Two actual times. An offer converts; an invitation to get in touch does not. Two named slots this week and next is the single biggest difference between a reminder that books and one that is read and forgotten.

One way to accept. A word, not a form.

Who it is from. A message from an unsaved number reads as spam regardless of content, so name the garage in the first line.

What to leave out: any claim about what happens if they do not book, invented urgency, and anything approaching an assessment of the vehicle's condition, which you cannot make from a due date.

Service and MOT are different conversations

Garages routinely merge these and lose both.

An MOT is a legal test on a fixed date, and the customer knows they need one. A service is discretionary, has no deadline, and needs a reason. Putting them in one message means the discretionary item dilutes the one with a deadline, and the customer books the test somewhere convenient without ever considering the service.

Send the MOT reminder on its own. Offer the service at the point of booking, where it is a sensible question about the same visit, or afterwards against the vehicle's own service interval. Two separate triggers, two separate messages, and a rule that they do not both fire in the same fortnight.

Fails, retests and the second decision

The reminder gets the car in. What happens next is where the money and the goodwill actually sit.

A fail is a customer who arrived expecting to pay for a test and is now being asked to approve repairs. That is a different decision, made under time pressure, often on the phone from work. It deserves its own process rather than being handled as an extension of the reminder: what failed, what it costs, what is advisory rather than a fail, and what the retest arrangement is.

Two details worth getting right. Separate the fail items from the advisories in whatever you send, because presenting them as one list makes the bill look arbitrary. And say clearly what happens if they decline: the vehicle, the certificate and the retest, stated plainly rather than implied.

Making it survive

Reconcile the list quarterly against the public MOT history data.

Suppress anyone already booked, checked at send rather than at build.

Stop on any reply and route it to a person.

Record the outcome per vehicle, so next year's message knows whether last year's worked.

Watch the opt-outs. A rising rate means the cadence or the content is wrong, and it costs you the channel before it costs you bookings.

Limits worth knowing about

A reminder cannot create capacity. If the diary is full in the fortnight before every expiry, earlier contact simply moves the queue.

Some customers will always shop on price, and a reminder competes with a £25 difference down the road.

The date can be wrong in ways you cannot see until the customer tells you, which is why the reply matters more than the send.

Contacting long-lapsed customers is a different exercise, with marketing rules attached, rather than an extension of a service reminder.

Messaging platform rules and pricing change, so a sequence built a year ago is worth rechecking before a big send.

What to build first

The audit. Count how many vehicles have a due date you would act on and a number that still works, and reconcile a sample against the public MOT data. No messages, no templates, no integration.

Two habits make the difference. Put two actual times in the message, because a reminder without an offer is just another notification on a phone that already has one from the government. And check the list against reality every quarter, since the fastest way to make a customer feel like a row in a database is to remind them about a car they sold.

Frequently asked questions

When can a customer book their MOT without losing the renewal date?

Up to a month minus a day before the current certificate expires. A certificate expiring on 15 May can be tested from 16 April with the anniversary preserved, and most customers do not know this.

When should reminders be sent?

Around the point the early window opens, with a follow-up inside it. Both should carry an offer of a slot rather than only the date.

Does DVSA already remind my customers?

Yes. Its free service texts or emails the registered keeper four weeks and two weeks before the MOT is due, so your message needs to offer a booking rather than repeat the deadline.

What makes a reminder convert?

Two named times, one word to accept, the registration, and the garage's name in the first line. An invitation to get in touch converts far worse than an offer of a slot.

Why do reminders go to the wrong people?

Sold vehicles, tests done elsewhere, dates that moved, and class or age exemptions. Reconciling the list against public MOT history data each quarter removes most of them.

Should the service reminder go in the same message?

No. The test has a deadline and the service does not, and combining them dilutes the one the customer was going to act on. Offer the service at the point of booking instead.

What should a reminder never say?

Anything about the vehicle's condition, which cannot be known from a due date, and any invented consequence. State the dates and offer a time.

How should an MOT failure be handled?

As its own conversation. Separate the failure items from the advisories, price them, and say plainly what happens to the vehicle and the retest if the customer declines.

How often should the list be cleaned?

Quarterly. A list with a third of its dates wrong produces messages that make a regular customer feel anonymous, which costs more than the missed bookings.

What if the diary is already full before every expiry?

Then earlier reminders move the queue rather than growing it, and the constraint is bay time. Worth knowing before attributing a flat month to the messages.

Related reading

• What the garage diary actually sells
• Why customers stop coming back
• Estimates, approvals and authority