I’m on my second private transfer of a lease, this time as the “buyer” and I recall the first one taking forever to complete. On the flip side I’ve bought and sold 20 cars privately over the years and never a hiccup.
GM Financial, after completing all of the financials in a seemingly record 6 business days, has now advised both of us that it could take 30-60 days for them to do the registration paperwork with the state of Florida. They threw this same number around in the initial phone call, but made it sound like that was dependent on us and the speed at which the various application forms etc were completed and processed.
They called me and said “Congratulations, you know have financial responsibility for the car. The next payment is due in 10 days and your account will be set up tomorrow. Of course, we recommend that you don’t drive the car until the registration is completed.”
Since I had time, I thought I might try to do the right thing and get a temp tag from my local tax collector. Reading the FL state guidelines, this actually seemed to fit. After a lot of confusion and discussion, they declared that since this was a dealer sale, not a private sale, it wasn’t their problem, and that clearly the dealer (GM Financial) should be giving me a plate.
I’ll post back on how long it actually takes GM Financial, and I appreciate that lease transfers are technically something they don’t have to do, but what could possibly take so long with processing the same paperwork that their dealer network does hundreds of times a day in 20 minutes?
I am holding out hope that this is a CYA number and it won’t take nearly that long.
Can’t speak for FL specifically but the ‘30-60 days’ is most likely just boilerplate language they use for every transfer in every state.
I’m sure GM Financial doesn’t have a crack team of analysts monitoring the moving average of DMV/registration turnaround times in all 50 states, so they just throw out a 30-60 day number that will cover 99% of transfers regardless of the state or circumstances.
Part of it is probably that one is a dealer that processes registrations many times a day specific to their state and one is a nationwide bank. They likely just farm it out to a 3rd party company that handles all the registrations.
For me, in some cases, registration in NJ has taken over 100 days. Not sure what you think gets done in “20 minutes” by the dealer – DMV and 3rd party runners are slow, has nothing to do with GM. If you search, you will find this is not uncommon. You can look into renting a transporter plate from a wholesaler.
If it makes you feel any better, FL generally is pretty fast, but I’m not sure how GM does this, do they send the paperwork to a local DMV office, or did they ask you where you want it sent?
BMWFS sends the paperwork to you, and you take it to the DMV
PFS asks you where you want it sent, DMV, tag office, whatever, and they send it there
That’s interesting. As far as I’m aware, in FL I BELIEVE local dealers can send your info straight to the tag agency - I think that they can print you out a registration on the spot if you are transferring a tag, but I may be misremembering. Similarly, I’ve bought new cars out of state and the out of state dealer has successfully processed enough of FL registration that they didn’t tell me I can’t drive the car home. I’d have to go dig through my old paperwork to see exactly what they did though.
In this case, GMF said for Florida, they needed all my local tax collector office information, however they indicated that they’d be sending “a packet of paperwork with checks” to me to hand deliver to them. I had to make sure six times that they didn’t intend to mail anything to my tax collector’s office directly because that would surely be a disaster.
And in the tax collector (tag agency) process itself for a private sale here, you walk in with your signed forms, write them a check, and walk out with registration and a plate in your hand. It is relatively unusual to see a temporary tag on a vehicle in FL, except for the ones that are obviously fake.
Keep in mind this isn’t a sale at all. The vehicle will remain owned by BMWFS. I assumed, based on your original description, that BMWFS was sending paperwork to Florida DMV, then forwarding you the new registration. This is where delays tend to pop-up. If, as you describe in your more recent response, BMWFS is sending you the packet directly, it should move much faster. (as also stated by IAC_Scott)
Of course, I’m saying buyer/seller just because that feels more familiar. This is only the 2nd lease transfer I’ve ever been part of - but as soon as they said “30-60 days” I had flashbacks of the last one I did (I was “seller”) mysteriously taking weeks and weeks to complete as well. In fairness, that was also dealing with Ally which was a pain on its own.
GMF has been great to work with so far, but the absurdity of them literally telling me my payment was due in a week but also that they don’t recommend that I drive the car but instead park it somewhere safe for a couple of months was comical.
I’ll update with the final timeline when I get paperwork in hand.
If you think about it, what is their incentive to hurry? They are still getting paid and the vehicle theoretically is sitting somewhere not racking up miles!
I am in the same boat with GM. Lease transfer completed on June 27th, first payment due on July 2nd, and I still don’t have any paperwork to register the car in IL.
That’s useful info - please update when you actually hear that they’ve mailed you the paperwork. Of course your timing (like mine) was bad around weekends and July 4 - it’s technically only been 10 business days for you since signing, which I agree seems like an eternity for them to complete some paperwork.
