Certificate of conformity delivery time: why it varies so much by brand

Why nobody but the manufacturer can deliver

A certificate of conformity has exactly one legitimate source: the manufacturer or its authorised representative. Only there do the type-approval data sit from which the document is generated, and its content and layout are fixed across Europe by Annex IX to Regulation (EU) 2018/858. An intermediary files the request, checks the result and delivers it — the processing time itself does not belong to it.

That leaves one question worth asking when you compare offers. Not “how do you manage it so fast?”, but: what happens if the manufacturer overruns the time you announced? We come back to that below.

When the clock actually starts

The announced time does not start with your first e-mail. It runs from the moment the request can be filed with the manufacturer in full, that is from:

• payment of the order;
• and a complete file: chassis number checked, no query left open by the manufacturer.

It is counted in working days. Weekends and public holidays do not count, and the annual shutdowns some manufacturers observe in summer and at the year end lengthen the queue on top of that. If you order in July or between Christmas and New Year, budget for it. The details are in the help-centre answer How long does it take?

The table, from the fastest brand to the slowest

Average observed times in working days, brand by brand. These are orders of magnitude, because the calendar belongs to the manufacturer. We tell you the time that applies to your brand before payment, and the lead-time barometer shows alongside it what was actually measured on the files we delivered most recently.

Where the spread comes from

Neither the size of the brand nor the value of the vehicle explains the gap. Three things do.

• The processing route. Some groups handle every European request through a single central department — at Opel, for instance, Opel Automobile GmbH in Rüsselsheim. Others route the request through the national importer, as Suzuki does: the right importer has to be identified first, it then queries the factory, and the answer travels back the same way. That single extra link accounts for most of the difference.
• The volume. Manufacturers with the largest European sales receive the most requests and have industrialised issuing, often through an online portal. Brands with small volumes work through weekly batches.
• The age of the vehicle. On a recent model the record is immediately available. On an older one an archive search is needed — and ten years after the vehicle was manufactured, the manufacturer’s obligation under Article 36 of Regulation (EU) 2018/858 to issue a duplicate at all comes to an end. That limit is the subject of our article on a lost certificate of conformity.

The same three causes explain the price differences as well: see the price and lead-time list, brand by brand.

Planning backwards from your registration appointment

Most crunches are not caused by a slow brand but by a late request. So count backwards from the date the registration authority expects your file:

1. The registration appointment — the fixed point by which every document has to be in hand.
2. The postal time, if the office wants to see the paper original. The digital copy reaches you on the day the manufacturer sends us the document.
3. The manufacturer’s processing time in working days, from the table above.
4. The working day of payment: we check the chassis number and file the request the same working day.

Whether your office insists on the original or accepts the digital copy is worth settling in advance. In France the digital copy goes through for the vast majority of online procedures; some offices in Belgium (DIV), Luxembourg and Switzerland, and many German Zulassungsstellen for counter appointments, still ask for the paper document. The answer By e-mail or by post? sets out which is which, and the step-by-step registration guide covers the rest of the file.

If the announced time is missed

The time quoted before payment is a commitment on our side, not a vague estimate. If it is exceeded, the lead-time guarantee triggers automatically: beyond a short tolerance margin, an increasing discount accrues per working day of delay, up to a published cap. The values in force — tolerance, discount per step, cap — are on the guarantee page and are applied at the delivery date of the digital copy.

You have nothing to do for it. We chase the manufacturer from the due date, tell you by e-mail about every delay and the new expected date, and refund the discount to your payment method with no claim to file. If the delay becomes unreasonable or the manufacturer ends up refusing outright, the refund is in full.

That is precisely the difference between a guaranteed delivery time and a merely asserted one — and the question to put to any provider.

What does not shorten the time

• Paying more. The manufacturer applies its own calendar, indifferent to what an intermediary charged. We offer priority processing only for the brands whose manufacturer genuinely accepts a fast lane — anywhere else it would be a surcharge with nothing behind it.
• Changing provider. Everyone goes to the same source. Starting again elsewhere loses the days already spent.
• Choosing the digital copy. It saves the days of the post, not the days of processing — and it is included in every order anyway.
• Chasing every other day. At the manufacturer’s end it speeds nothing up.

Be wary when someone promises an “instant” certificate, or delivery “within 24 hours”, for every brand. The document is issued by the manufacturer; nobody can produce it in its place. The help-centre answer Why do lead times vary? goes through this brand by brand.

What actually helps

One lever works far better than all the others, and it costs nothing: start the request when you sign the purchase, not when the vehicle is handed over. There are often two to three weeks between the two — exactly the time people then try to make up.

Two habits usefully complete it.

• An exact chassis number. One wrong character sends the request back to square one. Take the 17 characters from field E of the registration certificate, photographed rather than retyped. Field E goes back to the harmonised codes of Directive 1999/37/EC and means the same thing in every EU registration document.
• Flag the special cases straight away: conversion by a bodybuilder, electric drivetrain, van version. Each can call for an additional document that is better requested at the outset.

The full brand-by-brand overview is in our guide to certificate of conformity turnaround.