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What do I text a customer whose MOT is due?
The MOT reminder text, with the early-test window checked. Free, no sign-up, and no customer detail leaves this page.
Copy it off your own record. We never look one up.
What to put in it
Names and numbers
Do a batch
Twenty at a time, typed by you. There's no upload, and that's deliberate.
Subject
Written from our own wording this time. The tone options are back when the connection is.
Names, registrations and dates are filled in on this device. They are never sent anywhere.
Postal marketing is not the PECR electronic-mail route. Confirm your data-protection basis and honour objections before you copy or print.
This is not legal advice. We name PECR and the UK GDPR. The ICO's guidance is listed under Sources below.
This tool needs JavaScript to work out the dates. The wording rules and the MOT rules it uses are all written out below.
- Great Britain: you can get an MOT up to a month, minus a day, before it runs out and keep the same renewal date. GOV.UK's own example is an MOT running out on 15 May, where the earliest test that holds the date is 16 April.
- Test earlier than that and the renewal date for the following year changes to one year, minus a day, from the date the vehicle last passed.
- Northern Ireland: tests are booked through DVA and carried out at DVA test centres, cars are first tested at four years rather than three, and no early-test rule is published, so this tool derives no earliest date there at all.
- The free government reminder is opt-in, arrives one month before a car, van or motorcycle MOT, and is not available to anyone living in Northern Ireland, who gets a letter by post seven weeks before instead.
- A GSM 7-bit text holds 160 septets. For multipart estimates this page uses 152 septets a part, or 66 UTF-16 units a part for 16-bit text.
- The ICO treats a reminder that promotes a price, an offer or an upgrade as direct marketing, and a plain appointment confirmation as a service message.
How the MOT reminder text writer works
Nothing here is generated from scratch. The dates come out of one rule that DVSA publishes, applied to the date you typed off your own record. The compliance wording comes out of a clause library built from the ICO's own guidance. A language model writes only the greeting, the sentence that frames the date and the invitation. It never sees a name, a registration, a price or a date, because your browser fills those in afterwards.
The one line worth sending is the early-test line. GOV.UK puts it plainly: you can get an MOT up to a month, minus a day, before it runs out and keep the same renewal date. Their own example is an MOT running out on 15 May, where the earliest test that holds the date is 16 April. Type your expiry date and we do that arithmetic for the month you're in. One exception catches people out: if the last MOT was in Northern Ireland and the next test is in Great Britain, GOV.UK says the rule does not apply, and the renewal date runs from the date of the new test instead. Tell us where the last MOT was, under Advanced, and we leave the promise out.
Northern Ireland is different, and we treat it that way rather than pasting a British rule over it. Tests there are booked through DVA and carried out at DVA test centres. Cars are first tested at four years, not three. No early-test rule of the British kind is published either, so we don't work out an earliest date there at all. Guessing one would cost your customer the days they've already paid for.
Who this is for
You run an independent garage with one to four ramps, and you're the Class 4 test centre as well, so the MOT diary is your diary. The dates live on last year's job card, in the desk diary or in your head. You've got eight minutes between jobs to write to the twenty regulars whose tests are coming up.
Service advisors on the counter use it the same way, one customer at a time or twenty pasted into the batch box. In Northern Ireland you're the garage that services the car while DVA does the test. The same reminder has to say something different there, and we write it that way.
Garage questions about MOT reminder texts
How early can I get an MOT done before the due date?
A month minus a day, and you keep the same renewal date. GOV.UK's own example: an MOT running out on 15 May can be tested from 16 April without the date moving. Go earlier than that and the new certificate runs a year minus a day from the test, so your customer loses the difference. That is the whole reason this line belongs in a reminder. One exception: if the last MOT was in Northern Ireland and the next test is in Great Britain, the rule does not apply at all, and the renewal date runs from the date of the new test.
Can I text my customers about their MOT?
Often yes, but it depends on what the text says. The ICO treats a plain reminder about an appointment as a service message, and a message that promotes a price, an offer or an upgrade as direct marketing. Direct marketing to an individual needs consent or the soft opt-in. This tool tells you which one you have built as you build it, and prints the five soft opt-in conditions when you need them.
Doesn't the government already send an MOT reminder?
It does, and it is free, but the keeper has to sign up for it. DVSA send a text or email one month before a car, van or motorcycle MOT. It tells them a date is coming. It cannot offer a slot, cannot carry your price, does not know what you put on last year's advisory, and cannot take a reply to book. Yours can do all four, and it comes from someone they have met.
What's different about Northern Ireland?
Almost everything. Tests are booked with DVA and done at DVA test centres, so a garage there cannot say "book your MOT with us". Cars are first tested at four years old rather than three. The GOV.UK reminder service excludes anyone living in Northern Ireland, who gets a letter by post seven weeks before instead. And no early-test rule is published, so we do not print one.
How many characters can I put in one text?
160 septets, if every character is in the GSM 7-bit tables. Longer messages need a concatenation header. Because providers can use different header widths, this meter gives a conservative estimate using 152 septets per GSM-7 part or 66 UTF-16 units per 16-bit part. Some senders can fit 153 or 67 instead. An emoji counts as two UTF-16 units. Check your sender's billing before relying on a boundary estimate.
What if the MOT has already run out?
The tool says so calmly and offers one factual line: the vehicle can only go on the road to a pre-arranged MOT test, or to or from somewhere to be repaired, and it must still be roadworthy. There is no urgent tone here and no countdown, on purpose. A customer who is already annoyed about a lapsed certificate is not the person to send a marketing blast to, and a nuisance text is how you lose them for good.
Do you store my customer list?
No, and there is nothing to store. Names, registrations, dates and prices are substituted in your browser after the message comes back. The only thing that leaves this page is a short list of settings, which nation, which channel, which tone, with no text of yours in it at all. The short list of settings is sent to our server and on to the model only to draft the message; those settings are not stored after the message comes back. Reload the page and even the batch box is gone.
Writing an MOT reminder text that gets a booking
A reminder that lands well is mostly one useful fact. For an MOT, that fact is the early-test window. If a customer has been putting off booking because they think coming in early costs them days, a single sentence with a date in it answers them. Everything else in the message is admin.
The rest is knowing which message you're sending. Under PECR a due-date reminder and a price promotion are different things. What separates them is whether the text encourages the customer to buy something, whatever the subject line says. Get that wrong and your reminder becomes an unsolicited marketing text, which is how a good customer ends up opting out for good.
Northern Ireland is where most reminder templates quietly fall over, because they were written for a garage that does its own testing. If you're in Belfast or Omagh, you're reminding a customer about a DVA appointment, not a slot on your ramp, and the wording has to say so.
Sources and last checked
Dataset version 2026-08-24. Every rule we apply here was read off the publisher's own page on 24 August 2026, not recalled: GOV.UK Getting an MOT for the early-test rule and its worked example, the class 4 fee, the defect categories and the retest conditions; GOV.UK Get, view or stop MOT reminders for the free state reminder, its Northern Ireland exclusion and the letter that arrives seven weeks before instead; nidirect for DVA testing and booking, the four-year first test and the NI test fees; the ICO's Identify direct marketing and electronic mail marketing guidance for the service-message test, regulation 22 and the five soft opt-in conditions; and 3GPP TS 23.038 and TS 23.040 for the SMS character tables and the multipart capacities.
Where a rule isn't published (the Northern Ireland early-test window and the month-end case in Great Britain), we say so instead of filling the gap. Our editorial team at Preferred Mechanic compiles and maintains this list. When a source moves, the version date above moves with it.
More tools for UK garages
For the walk-round before the test there's the pre-MOT checklist builder, and for the side of the business that earns between MOTs, the car valeting price list builder. Both sit on the free tools hub with everything else we've built for the trade.
Get your garage listed
Your regulars already know where you are. The drivers three streets away don't. Claim your garage's listing and they can find you the same way your regulars did.
The categories those drivers browse are Auto Repair Shops and Inspections & Emissions Testing. In Northern Ireland, it's Garages in Northern Ireland. The trade side of our site, where you run a listing from, sits under For shop owners.
Worth a bookmark for the next batch of reminders. Nothing is stored on this page, so there is nothing to log back into.