Dear Apple, DUNS is a scam, but you already know that
blog.metamorphium.com
blog.metamorphium.com
This continued to the point that we actually changed the company phone number to avoid these people. We left the old number working for a while, and the only calls were DUNS spam.
After we dropped the old number we found only one disadvantage to having our DUNS contact details being out of date. When we applied for one of the more verified SSL certificate packages available, the company phoned the number on the DUNS database to verify.
But that could be worked around, and a bit of hassle there was far outweighed by the advantage of stopping the spam calls.
So linkbait headline? No, I would agree from several years of having been on their database.
Similarly my wife at some point had to register some kind of entity to get reimbursed for speaking at a conference and immediately unleashed a torrent of spam. (Correction — my wife's torrent of spam was from DUNS :-)). But hey, mine was just a normal business name registration, and i got the same result.
The US is plagued with cold-calling spammers — just part of the American Experience.
DUNS is the main exception in the time I've been in business.
In the UK they rarely enforce it but often enough so companies think twice. They also tell the telephone networks hosting the spam callers to kick them off.
It's a useful tool used in the real world of business. Need to see how long a company typically takes to pay? You use DUNS. Want to get and Federal work? You have to have a DUNS before you can register (in addition to your IRS paperwork).
Of course I get the idea that if you're a lone coder how that can be a pain. I also get that if you aren't in the US that it might not make any sense. However that's no reason to call it a scam.
It may just be an indication that the the system is being used for things that it was never intended for. Maybe for the original uses, a 30-day lead time wasn't such a big deal, e.g. "when doing business with the government" over many years.
Total scam.
These two links share similar experiences:
http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.505486.1...
http://www.cartoonbarry.com/2010/06/dun_bradstreet_seems_sca...
Sounds like they're going with the Better Business Bureau's model, only with less consumer pretense that they're a legitimate governmental agency with the power to do anything and less charitable "we're a volunteer-staffed agency and thus neutral" airs.
They have a pattern of shady business practices, including bullying customers into paying more for a service that they have a federally-granted monopoly on. They are abusing their position as a DUNS provider to make profit off of uninformed small businesses. That's what earns them the title of a scam. DUNS may very well be a useful service, but if it's managed by a scamming company, then the usefulness of the service erodes.
I think the real problem here is trusting ratings organizations to objectively "rate" companies when they have an incentive to extract money from those companies.
These days I think the majority of these claims refer to separate "social media experts" who claim to be able to adjust "yelp reputation" and imply that they have an in, but do not work for Yelp or have any connections, just sockpuppet accounts.
http://www.thefunkyapple.com/2012/01/scam-alert-craigslist-a...
Tool? It does not sound like a tool, at least not based on your description:
"Need to see how long a company typically takes to pay?"
...sounds kind of like a credit rating service...
"Want to get and Federal work?"
...sounds like bureaucracy.
It sounds to me like DUNS is a service, not a "tool," and that they are the sort of service that slows everyone and everything down. It should come as no surprise that it is a pain for lone coders: it was designed for expansive bureaucracies, and it has the effect of further expanding those bureaucracies.
I have to wonder what it is that Apple hopes to gain by using this system. Why do they even bother to uniquely identify app developers? Why not just issue a signing key every time someone pays their fee? It sounds like DUNS is just another way for Apple to exclude small operations and focus on the large operations that make most of the popular apps in their app store.
I'd guess a reaction to fly-by-night developers with scammy and copycat apps that generated far more bad press for the App Store than DUNS-gate.
This is a sear monopolistic policy, why should I pay fucking 150$ to any agency for just getting a DUNS number. On top of that, there is this annoying wait period and delays.
Flat out wrong.
DUNS numbers are not a scam. I've had them at past companies and my fathers company had one many many years ago. And I've used them to check credit on companies that I've dealt with. Has nothing to do with the goverment.
It's simply wrong to call DUNS numbers a scam.
And the TL;DR: http://www.dnb.co.uk/myduns
Any idea why it's free in the UK?
* Android App Store/Google Play becomes a viable business proposition
* Windows App Store becomes a viable business proposition
* Blackberry App Store becomes a viable business proposition
* The demographics of Apple device owners shift away from the current favorable, affluent, app-buying profile
* The app screening process gets easier, such that malware and other liability-causing software infests it the way that Google Play is infested (and remember, Apple and Disney are longtime buddies and Apple is working a lot harder for media companies' cooperation than Google is)
* The developer program entry barriers become something that bother serious coders already invested in the Apple ecosystem, as opposed to random grumpy developers on the Internet (it is rarely a good business move to treasure the opinion of people who aren't your customers and don't intend to become customers)
Currently, none of these things have happened.
i was surprised to see you list the screening process as a plus though - that alone would be enough to make sure i never go anywhere near apple mobile dev. i can sees users being (justifiably!) nervous about malware, but as a developer the process looks onerous and capricious. (though again i suppose i mostly hear about it from disgruntled people)
That trust that users have in the app ecosystem is, from Apple's point of view, a tremendously valuable asset, and so they are taking logical steps to preserve it. If they lose it, people stop buying apps, the virtuous circle goes to pot, and Apple is in deep trouble. Sure, being assholes about the app approval process has costs, and it's really annoying from the developer side - but from Apple's point of view, the cost of not being hardasses about the approval process, is absolutely ruinous.
Still, I'll definitely be bookmarking this and coming back - if the article is correct, this is really helpful. Will be good to hand to clients too.
When I called them I was told I need some ~$700/yr service if I wanted to initiate the process on that phone call (though it was strongly recommend that I go with $1500/yr option).
Some time later, using their business search function, I found that they had issued a number for my company.
This is a service that is simply begging for some competition, and I'm waiting for a startup entrant.
1) It's painful to use (horrible navigation) and they constantly try to up-sell you (thus the horrible navigation).
2) If you need to correct information on your DUNS account it takes forever.
This is what happened to me while getting my Apple Developer Account. There are multiple departments at D&B , ones that can only verify domains, or others that look up your business information. They coordinate very poorly. For whatever reason they already had my business, but old information and the incorrect domain. It ended up taking 3 tries and six weeks for D&B to update my information.
Right now, it takes at least 4 months for non-US companies to put an app in the app store. This is ridiculous, immoral.
Relevant http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4977889
I took this to local authorities, but they are not willing to act on this yet.
It wasn't half as annoying as having to snail mail a piece of paper to Apple (Canadian government GST agent form, must be paper).
I don't see how it's any different from all the other hoops I have to jump through to run a business.
The first is, that Apple was getting extreme heat for how long it was taking for them to verify companies. There were many posts from Rogue amoeba, and many linkbait articles complaining about the "App store lottery" and how Apple wouldn't let many people play.
Apple switching to DUNS is clearly an attempt to make this process go more smoothly for everyone.
More importantly, though, because of the potential for liability that Apple has in selling items thru the App Store on behalf of developers, Apple needs to assure, via some "reasonable" process, that they are dealing with real entities.
A business isa fictitious entity, almost by definition, and so to protect itself from knowingly or negligently selling copyrighted material it's not authorized to, it has to authenticate that the businesses it is entering into contracts with are legitimate businesses. IF it does that, then putting warez on the appstore becomes the liability of the business, not apple.
Apple is a huge target and has been harassed by frivolous and obnoxious lawsuits seemingly forever... so it is not unreasonable for them to ensure that their contracts with App developers are legitimate because they are with legitimate entities.
Thirdly, DUNS numbers are not some obscure number used only when doing business with the government.
They are the primary credit reporting agency for businesses in the USA. Most businesses (or at least many) get a DUNS number just in the course of doing business and don't ever have to apply. For instance D&B has a feed of incorporation info from many state's secretaries of state, and as a matter of course, issues DUNS numbers to businesses after they incorporate.
Building credit for a business, because of limited liability laws, is more difficult than individual credit. The fees DUNS charges are usually for their "credit builder" programs, and given the value of the service to a business that needs credit (think your mom & pop flower shop, etc.) they are probably a good deal.
This doesn't exclude shady sales practices or make them right. There's certainly a great deal of reform that the whole credit reporting agency business should go thru...mostly removing government protections of liability for false information, etc.
Consider, though, that it is rather easy in the US to form a business and to dissolve one. Combine that with credit and you risk scammers forming businesses, running up debt and then shutting them down in bankruptcy and making off with the loot.
So, unfortunately, some of the obnoxiousness of D&B comes from their desire to prevent this... but at the same time, their practices are pretty incompetently done (as is the case with all Credit Reporting Agencies) and so what may seem like a scam is often really just poorly implemented policies, with a reasonable motive.
The choice here for Apple is either use DUNS, a third party whom they can effectively offload compliance liability to
[1] As currently set up by the US government, really. The US government passed laws that allow credit reporting agencies to violate privacy in all kinds of ways. This is why DUNS and the other CRAs are such problems for consumers in a huge variety of ways. They are "regulated" such that they are very difficult to hold accountable. The only upside- you get a single free copy of the info they are holding on you, but only once a year. (Which is weak sauce, to say the least.)