In the UK the government runs the booking of driving tests from a central online system. Because of Covid, and because the test has a 50% pass rate at best, the

In the UK the government runs the booking of driving tests from a central online system. Because of Covid, and because the test has a 50% pass rate at best, there is now a lot of pressure on this system. People wanting a test are getting test dates 6 months out. A whole industry has grown up around scraping the website so that kids now are forced to pay sniping companies £20 a time to grab cancellations as they appear on the system if they want an earlier test date. In my view private companies are camping on a government-run system and extracting their own tax on new drivers. This is the dark side of clever sniping systems, it starts out as a way for an individual to get ahead but quickly gets industrialized so that those who can't afford to pay for the service are left out in the cold.