Dealers want to get the deal bought asap and its to their benefit to do so, but its not always that easy. A customer wouldn't typically be aware of the point in time the deal got bought...they'd just find out if it hadn't because they'd be getting a call to re sign or in this case bring the car back. A week is a long time but not unusual. A full month would be excessive. My bet is they couldn't get the deal bought and a loan payment hadn't been made. If the customer had made a loan payment to a lender this would be a completely different situation.
Regardless, thumbs down to the dealer for handling it how they did. Who knows what happened behind the scenes -- maybe someone dropped the ball or maybe they worked hard to get the deal done but they couldn't. It won't matter now because they ended up treating their customers like dirt and they'll get some bad word of mouth from this.
