What map do you plan to play? That of patience or anticipation? It is indeed the moment to choose if you are one of the car owners forced to pass the technical control. The fault – and yes, one more, at the Covid! – The confinement of spring 2020 and the impossibility of going to a specialized center in order to submit your vehicle to the compulsory two-year examination. The government then issued an order allowing a three-month tolerance. Also, all those who had a “deadline” in March or April had until June to comply. Not without creating elsewhere “then a certain traffic jam“recalls Bruno Porlevet, who runs Verif’Autos Maubec.
It is this same “tsunami” that professionals in the sector fear, between May and July, suddenly inviting motorists to bring forward their meeting by a few weeks. “Our role as an industry leaderindicates in particular Laurent Palmier, CEO of Securitest is to alert motorists. In order to avoid unpleasant surprises, they must anticipate. Usually, regarding 20% of vehicles require a counter-visit…. By doing it at the last moment, the technical control centers and car garages – for the necessary repairs – are at high risk of being saturated”. With the direct consequence: either becoming an outlaw and exposing yourself to a fine of 135 €, or experiencing a few strokes of stress in order to afford a peaceful holiday.
covid effect
The call is all the more judicious, as the centers are currently idling. “We check an average of 8 cars per day compared to around twenty during the so-called normal period.“, confirms Bachir Laribi, of Auto Bilan du Rouet in Marseilles “who is suddenly considering”either to hire a CDD for the future rush, or to stay open 6 days and 7 with crazy hours“, he specifies while evoking the difficulty of convincing customers to anticipate by one or two months. “It’s a question of budget. When you know that a control costs around 80 € and that it is necessary to go to the fund every two years, few are those who agree to lose two months.“What is more in this period where the purchasing power is damn badly abused and instead invites you to postpone non-essential expenses until T.
The feeling is no different with Bruno Porlevet, whose agenda is far from full. The Vauclusien also took the opportunity to pay off the holidays so that “everyone is then on deck when necessary“with perspective”to increase the daily working hours, like two years ago.“
Avoid the bottleneck
And to explain:The verification time of all the control points is incompressible. It is between 40 and 45 minutes on average. Do the math if you only work 8 hours… And to these checks, you will have to add the counter-visit for 20% to 25% of the vehicles“, continues the director of Vérif’Autos Maubec who nevertheless wants to be reassuring: “We answered present two years ago, there is no reason for it to be different this time.“
Will his colleagues also manage to meet this challenge of 1.5 million additional vehicles? In the meantime, thousands of text messages are currently being sent by large retailers to their customers in order to avoid this dreaded bottleneck.
