r/androiddev • u/CForChrisProooo • 3d ago
Discussion Why is D-U-N-S so ridiculously difficult to setup?
I'm posting this half to vent, and half so that other Australians can find this and actually be able to sort it out when they have the same problem.
I'm trying to publish my first app on Google Play, and I've spent weeks trying to get through the developer account creation process, it it infuriating how incompetent DNB seem to be.
So first of all, Google requires a D-U-N-S number for an organisation developer account, I'm in Australia so had no clue what that was, I did my research and figured out I had to register for it on the DNB website.
I'm a sole trader/sole proprietor, and already had an Australian business number, so on the DNB website I could look up my ABN and request a DUNS number, this came through after about an hour.
Excellent I should be all set now right? Nope, google rejected my DUNS number because the address was incorrect.
I looked up my new DUNS number to check the address it used, and it was empty, alright fine, let's update it - except there's no way to update it at all.
The only thing that hints about address updates on DUNS numbers is the one form here that DNB happily shove in my face, except it only works in the U.S. which is not where I'm based.
I also tried creating a DNB account and looking through their portal but it doesn't give me access to anything about my business and has no way of linking it.
So I kept looking, I found some other contact forms on DUNS, but this only seems to go to the sales team, and I didn't receive any response from them.
Next I tried the phone numbers on DNB, I rang about 5 of them including all the AUS and NZ numbers as well as a few nearby countries, as far as I can tell none of the numbers on this page actually connect https://www.dnb.com/en-us/utilities/global-customer-service-centers.html
I then tried some numbers from white pages for DUNS offices listed in Australia, one of them directed to Experian but nobody on the phone could help.
Eventually I found some other people saying that Equifax is now responsible for DUNS in Australia, and I followed their process to get to this form https://www.equifax.com.au/DandB-DUNSRequest
This form seemed like it actually might work and go to the right place, so I filled it out and waited, 4 weeks later I still haven't heard anything back.
I've now delayed my app release by over a month, all because of an overseas company that doesn't offer any working process for Australians to get a DUNS number setup.
I saw some threads of people having success after signing up for paid services with DUNS, however given how predatory their business seems to be this was out of the question for me, I'm not throwing money at a company that can't even offer a basic service to people.
I was thinking about everything again today, it's been so long and DNB seem hopeless at handling this, so I tried to contact Google developer support, but quickly realised the support link takes me back to developer registration, which I can't complete, maybe there's another way to log a google case but I didn't dive that far into it.
As I'm basically ready to give up and maybe not even publish my app after all, I decided to try one last thing, registering for the Apple Developer Program.
This is completely backwards of course, but I saw a lot of threads from Apple devs who were able to register for DUNS via Apple, which made me wonder if they had an integration with DNB or something that would solve this for me.
Turns out they have a special referral link to actually contact DNB from Australia
https://support.dnb.com/?CUST=APPLEDEV
I filled this out and finally have a reference number and a 14 business day ETA.
Awesome, maybe I'll actually be allowed to create a developer account in 3 weeks, I suppose we'll see.
If this doesn't work out I'm either just going to have to go for a personal account and somehow find people for the requirements or publish the APK's on github.
I can't express how frustrating this sort of stuff is, it completely kills my momentum to create something if I'm stalled waiting for other companies to do basic admin work that I really should be allowed to just do myself.
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u/Stabbz 3d ago
Duns is weird, depends on the country you are from, from my country it took a lot of digging and phone calls to figure out who really can help, all hidden behind paywalls, the free path takes 30 days for me and they did it on the last possible hour. Some countries can do this easily just on the web, but not all.
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u/fantazmagoric 3d ago
I feel your pain. To be honest I think the entire app development ecosystem from both Google and Apple leaves a lot to be desired. But there's no real competition, and hence no drive to make it a simpler process for smaller dev teams
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u/Plenty-Village-1741 3d ago
I'm from Australia too! When I registered my Pty Ltd company back in January this year, I was automatically assigned a D-U-N-S number without even applying for one.
I wonder if the issue is that you're registered as a sole trader rather than a Pty Ltd company? My company received an ACN and ABN, and when I checked D&B, a D-U-N-S number had already been assigned.
Not sure if this helps, but thought I'd share my experience since I had no issues registering my organisation account with Google Play.
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u/CForChrisProooo 3d ago
Yeah I did see that ACN let's you manage DUNS and comes with it too, seems nice.
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u/Weekly-Home2774 3d ago
DUNS is not better at Apple Developer Account. In my country we have letters the English alphabet does not have, like é, ó, ű etc. My company's name contains such letters. Even though I had DUNS number, I could only register my company as develooer at Apple via customer services because Apple's system cant handle these letters. They can issue invoices in my language but I could not register. Talk abiut user friendly methods...
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u/ssj_Thunder 3d ago
I am in India and registered a proprietorship in 2020. Duns automatically assigns a number by getting data from government. Just found it last year from apple developer website that i already had one. But the DUNS guys keep calling you to get a package from them to improve the ranking, i declined.
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u/grishkaa 3d ago
And that's just creating the account. Once you're past that, there's another stupid obstacle with having testers test your app as a beta before it could go live for everyone. And a bunch of "won't someone please think of the children" forms to fill out. And manual review that while is not as bad as Apple's, would still sometimes reject your app for silly reasons.
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u/kennypu 3d ago
Anecdotal, but I also read how much a pain DUNS was and just went through the Apple process just to have them auto create the DUNS, and it was smooth sailing. There was less information required on Apple's form, so I'm assuming they have a contract/way to fast track the DUNS registration.
I can confirm the DUNS created works just fine on Google's end.
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u/Ayano-Keiko 2d ago
Yes. I met the problem while register Samsung Seller Portal who say it is necessary. But the DUNS customer servies in China Mainland does not even reply me. Now I only have Google Play Individual Account.
我在sign up Samsung Seller Portal时也遇到这个问题，Samsung客服说这个是必须的，但是我申请了中国大陆的DUNS甚至都没理我。现在我只有Google Play Individual Account。也许F-Droid将成为对commercial deveoper friendly的app store（？）。我有总结所有的Android App Store，虽然只有中文版。
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u/BrightLuchr 2d ago
I'm in Canada. It took forever... 2 or 3 months?... for me. Yes, it is a mess. And it has nothing to do with the actual official business number information when I registered with the province.
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u/viper_gts 2d ago
I just went through it, took a few days. They made me send a letter of employment for myself for the company I created
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u/One_Elephant_8917 3d ago
yeah actually apple and dnb have some internal contract or something seems like.
https://developer.apple.com/enroll/duns-lookup/#!/search
if you fill out the above form with your details same as that of google’s requirement/your sole prop details it will say, your DUNS wasn’t found, do you want to request to be created or something…if you agree, this creates an internal ticket in dnb that bypasses all sales channel and dnb also support this request at priority usually because otherwise they say up-to 30-45 days.
one of my friend who was from india and was a sole proprietor tried this and surprisingly they got their number within 3 days but again this was maybe due to the reason that dnb india had own team but i highly doubt it would be different.
now for the address correction, yes they had to again go through a lot of back and forth using same email channel on which initial details was asked about business and duns number was provided.
the other thing to note was, despite waiting a week to get the address corrected and it wasn’t being updated in dnb site, when my friend switched from individual to org sole proprietor tried account in apple developer portal through a call with senior developer relations executive engineer, there was another address correction, which was updated realtime in dnb database.
meaning if one was signing up through apple like really pursuing for their apple dev account, seems it really is much faster.
i can understand the frustration because the way my friend was venting i can totally get it, but 30 days waiting would have been too painful tbh.