Since Dec. 30, my S6 has been stuck at the Port of Wilmington on a random customs "hold." Does anyone have any experience with this sort of thing? I suspect the customs boys use that as an excuse to drive nice cars. Kathy Bis at Audi HQ has asked EH Harms to rush it as soon as it clears customs. She's been great.

But this has been a frustrating wait. Timeline so far:

Nov. 19: drop off at Munich; car transported to port of Emden a few days later. The car will now sit for a month in Emden.

Dec. 20: car loaded on "Atlas Highway" in Emden.

Dec. 30: car unloaded at Wilmington.

Jan 3: car placed on random customs "hold"

Jan. 8: still in customs...how many days does it take to inspect one little car?

Our cars are essentially "used" cars and go through a seperate process compared to the cars directly from the factory. My car took one week to get through customs and to the dealer while standard 'new' cars reached the dealer in three days.

"What Customs will do is make sure that the information provided to them in the entry for your vehicle matches up with your vehicle itself. This means VIN, make, model, year, etc. of vehicle and anything else that they would like to confirm. The type of inspection that will be done to your car is not the type of inspection where they will need to take your car apart or remove anything from it. The inspection that they will be doing is actually pretty standard and occurs on a regular basis to incoming vehicles that they randomly choose for inspection. I would be surprised if your vehicle is not released by Customs by the beginning of next week. When this is done I will inform Audi so that they can begin the process of transporting your vehicle to your dealer."