In Canada ours took several weeks. Luckily we prepared the submission ahead of time and discovered this was important, so we had one by the time we were ready for submission.

Having said that, the submission process didn't explain what a DUNs number was important for and it seemed like a weird thing to need...i share the frustration.

Interesting -- I am from Canada and AFAIK, even as a Canadian business, you can legitimately submit through the DUNS "US Government contractor" form for free.

I was stuck last year with a tight deadline for one of my enterprise apps (which needed the DUNS for me to publish) and I used this method; it cost me nothing and was complete within a few days.

I'm in Canada and my DUNS application took about a week.

As far as I'm concerned it's just another business number that I need to apply for.

You won't get far in business if you don't have the patience to put up with all the stupid paperwork.

Exactly, every country has a D&B branch with its own rates and delivery times.

In the UK I used this[1] and got the number instantly.

[1]http://salesmarketing.dnb.co.uk/find_my_company/

Same here. I used D-U-N-S Profile Lookup[1] and entered the company's detail (Singapore company). An hour later, I received an email containing the D-U-N-S number from noreply-appledev@apple.com

[1]https://developer.apple.com/ios/enroll/dunsLookupForm.action