Usually even when you have a DUNS number, Apple demands that some of the company entity codes are filled in correctly. D&B will usually offer to fix them for you in a month or take $200+ to do it faster.
The process that takes a month can be done over the phone or online but frequently D&B simply stops processing mid-correction and abandons the update. The process will be abandoned silently for a couple weeks, then you'll get calls offering once again to update for a fee.
It took me three months to register with Apple. And that was for an ordinary plain vanilla US domestic corporation.
Same story for my US company as well. First applied to the Dev Program August 1st, finally got in December 18th.
3 calls to Apple - all good, quality support, but basically the ball was always placed in D&B’s court . That was ~10 calls to D&B all of which were horrible. Definitely hang up and call again when told to call again told something can’t be done in the system - It obviously can be if Apple demands that it to be done.
The month lag time for changes is the real killer - particular when D&B always says everything is fine.
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One of the more fun incidents was when they altered the corporation to my personal name, as a sole proprietor after I’d called to get the LLC added to the end of the Corp’s name. Of course I didn’t find out for a month, as they claimed they’d done exactly what I’d wanted, and their web UI’s been broken for us ½ the time.
That incident is permanently in the corporate history now as though it really happened. Not worth fixing though.
Very similar experience. Started the enrollment process end of October this year. Got a DUNS number November 1st. But I didn't get the green light to actually register until December 26. That was after 2 phone calls to Apple + 2 phone calls to D&B + countless times making updates (and waiting for email confirmations) using the D&B iUpdate system. Always seemed like one company was ready to put the ball in other company's court.
Now I'm idling because you need to signup separately for iTunes Connect. After 5x times getting the same error ("Your Apple ID isn't authorized for iTunes Connect"), I contacted Appple Dev Support. Their response: iTunes Connect is down for scheduled maintenance thru Dec. 28th. Uh, then why didn't the error message say that? Or a sidebar? Or alert?
FWIW, I had to make a change to my D&B number (LLC, address, business codes), and it took just a couple business days to finish (I believe I remember receiving a phone call from them to "verify" some of it). (I already had a D&B number that they must have assigned to me at some point as I have been doing business for years.)
I was then able to register for an Apple iOS Enterprise account (in addition to a normal Business account) in a little over a week (and it only took that long because I missed an e-mail from them where they asked me to call them and finish the process: I probably would have had it done in four days).
Was there something particularly onerous or even simply "out of the ordinary" about the kinds of changes you were making? There seem to be a lot of horror stories posted here about this process, but that isn't everyone's experience, so I'm hoping to find out if it is just "they are highly variable, so it's like hitting the lottery" or if there are specific things people might hit that are hopefully-avoidable landmines in the process.
(BTW, I highly recommend, totally unrelated to this thread, jonhendry's comment below[1] re the goal of D&B.)
The process that takes a month can be done over the phone or online but frequently D&B simply stops processing mid-correction and abandons the update. The process will be abandoned silently for a couple weeks, then you'll get calls offering once again to update for a fee.
It took me three months to register with Apple. And that was for an ordinary plain vanilla US domestic corporation.