06/09/2026
Yesterday, WyeDrive received a one-star review from somebody who has never had a driving lesson with us.
The review followed a telephone conversation.
The caller lived outside the area, had booked a driving test in Hereford and wanted an instructor and car for the test. He had already driven thousands of miles in the UK on an international licence and felt he needed only a few lessons.
He later passed with two driving faults.
Good. Genuinely.
But that doesn’t make the advice he received during that telephone call wrong.
This week alone, we have received six or seven similar enquiries. People book a test in Hereford, sometimes travelling a considerable distance to take it, and only afterwards begin looking for an instructor willing to provide a car.
They frequently don’t want lessons. They want access to the instructor’s vehicle for the test.
That isn’t a driving lesson. It is car hire—with the instructor expected to accept all the professional and financial risk that comes with it.
No responsible instructor can judge somebody’s driving from the number of miles they claim to have covered. Experience matters, but mileage doesn’t tell us whether their driving is safe, legal or consistently at the standard required.
That requires an assessment.
If somebody is confident that their driving is already at the required standard, they can take the test in their own suitable and properly insured vehicle. If they want to use an instructor’s car, they must accept that the instructor will need to see them drive and be satisfied before agreeing to it.
That isn’t an attempt to sell “hours and hours” of unnecessary lessons. It is a reasonable professional boundary.
There is a wider issue here too.
Local learners are struggling to find tests while increasing numbers of people book appointments wherever they can find them, then arrive in the area looking for an instructor and vehicle at short notice. Instructors cannot abandon existing pupils to service tests booked by people with whom they have no working relationship.
Call it test tourism, desperation caused by the waiting-list problem, or an unintended consequence of a broken booking system. Whatever we call it, it is becoming a serious problem.
A test booking does not create an entitlement to an instructor’s car.
And a refusal to provide one without assessment is not poor customer service. It is professional responsibility.
