One can hope, and at least one South Carolina shop informed me they had a Form 4 returned in two months! But unfortunately the average response time for Form 4’s appears to be increasing.
Many Form 4’s have been pending for over six months, and normal wait is in the vicinity of nine months. It is not uncommon to hear of Form 4’s taking ten or eleven months. So how could a Form 4 be returned in two months!?!
Well, your guess is as good as mine. Perhaps wait times are decreasing. Maybe this Form 4 was dropped in the wrong stack. The applicant could have known someone or made a similar request that actually caused the form to be processed. (I highly doubt this, and if everyone calls the BATFE asking for their Form 4 to be rushed through as a favor I am certain the system will be slowed down.) Whenever an agency is drowning in paperwork and sitting on applications for six months plus mistakes will happen. Most of these mistakes cause delay, but occasionally one could help. And chalking this Form 4 up to an anomaly that is the best explanation I have. Short of more examples, I’ll leave it at that.
The better question is why does a two page form take nine months to process? Volume of forms received is the official response, but one cannot help but wonder if this wait is by design. . .