California Courtesy Delivery?
 

So I picked up my ZR1 from Tom Bell Chevrolet yesterday. I had ordered it from Barker in Illinois, and it's coded with CA smog and I was led to believe that I would simply show up, present my ID, sign some papers, pay for the PDI and be good to go. However as it turns out I left with a 30 day IL (not CA) dealer sticker and the car has not been registered in CA. I thought the delivering dealer was to do that, but they told me I would have to go to the DMV with all my paperwork and have the car inspected. That is exactly what I would have had to do had I opted for IL PDI and a transporter to my house, but seems contrary to what I have heard about other courtesy delivery experiences. My friend's Raptor delivery took 5min and he left with CA registration. So...anyone out there taken courtesy delivery in CA? Please share your story and help me figure out whose feet to hold the fire to!

A courtesy delivery is when you order a car from in your case Barker in Illinois and it is shipped directly from the factory to the courtesy dealer Tom Bell Chevrolet. Your car came from inventory at Barker and was not a courtesy delivery car. Now you will have to go to dmv and register the car and also get a smog check. On a courtesy delivery the receiving dealer does the dmv and no smog check is required. I suspect Barker already did the PDI on the car.

-NO, to all of that. The car came directly FROM the factory to Tom Bell. Barker never saw the car, just took the order for their allocation. Bell did the PDI.

The courtesy dealer should have treated you like you bought the car from them, complete the dmv and collect sales tax. My courtesy delivery dealer did it all, I was in and out in less than an hour and received the plates and title in about two weeks. I would call the selling dealer and have him contact the courtesy dealer and take care of the problem.

I did a Calif. courtesy delivery from the factory. My Calif dealer did everything. prep. tags. taxes. All I had to do was pay for these items.

Sounds like you made the mistake of using Tom Bell to start off. They don't sell a lot of corvettes so they are not familiar with the ordering process/pdi process. You should have used Mike Furman from Criswell Chev in Maryland. He is the specialist on ordering a corvette. Anyway it sounds like you/and the dealer in Barker may not have collected the CALI sales tax so you may have to go to the cali dmv to actually register it. Normally Tom Bell would handle that for you I believe as part of their pdi. Since you have Illinois temp registration I hope you do not have to go through the smog check process and vin verification but I bet you will. Sounds like the car was delivered to Barker dealer and then shipped out to Tom Bell? Keep us posted and good luck.

:iagree: What he said. If your car came from the factory then it is already CA certified. If it came from the dealer lot (which it sounds like it did) then you have to go through all the CA smog and registration B.S. I went through Mike Furman and did a courtesy delivery; piece of cake. Something went amiss - either your receiving dealer doesn't have a clue or it came from the selling dealer's inventory. It just means that you're going to have to do all the leg work. It'll eventually pass and be certified but will take time and patience. A lot of people on this forum have bought cars out of state and gone through the registration process. It's not impossible but can be a hassle. Hopefully your selling dealer can contact your receiving dealer and find out what happened to make life easier. Congrats on the car!

Again...IT DID NOT COME FROM THE SELLING DEALER'S INVENTORY. It was using his allocation, delivered straight from GM to Tom Bell in CA. It is not, nor ever was, and IL car.

Bearphoto, you might be right about the tax. I'll pass that along. I believe I was told that I would be paying any additional CA tax during delivery (added to PDI), but the Tom Bell guy didn't do that. But then he was pretty clueless about every aspect of the car and transaction. Andy in IL has been really on top of things, and has done courtesy delivery himself in IL, so the process isn't new to him.

I'm in Northern California. My 2016 Z06 was also a factory order with courtesy delivery locally and I never had to do a smog check or go to the DMV. Ordered my car with California Emissions.

FWIW, I found a dealer to accept Courtesy Delivery for a flat $250. That dealer does it all the time for the largest employer in that small town (>3500 people.) They were surprised they didn't have to go to the SC DMV as Kerbeck did everything, sent me a temp SC plate, paid the sales tax etc. So the SC Chevy Dealer were used to doing some of that but did not have to. Kerbeck is the largest Corvette dealer in the Country for a reason, they also know (as do others) what needs to be done.

Because I was applying for a special name plate I did have to go to the SCDMV when the name I selected was accepted.