hide random home http://www.dbisna.com/dbis/faq.htm (PC Press Internet CD, 03/1996)
Frequently Asked Questions

D+B Frequently Asked Questions

Before contacting D&B with your question, please take a moment to look over the information in this document. If you don't find your answer here, you'll have the opportunity to submit your question on a correspondence form.

How would you categorize your question?

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March 15, 1996 - CAH

Seeking Employment Opportunities?

Do not send your resume to the webmaster or customer service department. They cannot process your requests for employment.

Dun & Bradstreet is always looking for talented men and women of all backgrounds. Please see our job listings on CareerMosaic.

See also:

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Technical Problems

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Browser error after purchase was confirmed

If you entered your credit card and confirmed your purchase amount but received an error before the report was displayed, do not resubmit the billing confirmation screen or duplicate billing will occur. Instead, contact our webmaster for assistance in retrieving your report.

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Document Contains No Data Messages

This message may be displayed by your browser if our server takes an abnormally long amount of time fulfilling your request. This rare, temporary situation is usually caused by excessive network traffic or CPU utilization.

If you receive this error because of excessive response times, we suggest that you wait about 15 minutes and try again. If performance does not improve after one hour, please notify our webmaster.

See also System Availability.

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If this information does not answer your question, please contact D&B.

Trouble viewing the Home Page

Many pages on our site, including the Home Page, have been written using HTML 3.0 extensions. These extensions are not supported by all browsers, however, the vast majority of our customers are using compatible browsers. So, we decided to update our site to enhance its appeal.

See also Obtaining a Compatible Browser.

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If this information does not answer your question, please contact D&B.

Obtaining a Compatible Browser

If your Internet service provider gives you a standard PPP (point-to-point protocol) connection, you can get a copy of the Netscape Navigator, which supports HTML 3.0, and security, which is needed to access our online products.

There are many other compatible browsers available. When selecting a browser, be sure that it supports SSL (secure sockets layer) encryption. If it doesn't, you will not be able to access our online products.

If your provider doesn't support PPP and you must use a proprietary browser, express your disappointment to your provider.

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If this information does not answer your question, please contact D&B.

Can't get into the Product Access section

Our Product Access section is actually stored on a separate, secure web server. We employ security to help protect your personal information from Internet hackers. To access our secure server, you must be using a browser that supports the SSL (secure sockets layer) protocol. This protocol uses the selector https in the URL rather than http.

In addition, our secure server operates on TCP/IP port 443. Many corporate firewalls do not permit transmissions on this port thereby preventing you from accessing our secure server. If you are using a compatible browser and still can't access our product section, you are probably behind this kind of firewall. Talk to your network administrator.

See also:

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Using America Online, Compuserve, and Prodigy

America Online recently released a new version of their software that supports the use of third party browsers (such as Netscape) over your AOL connection. However, it appears that AOL is blocking transmissions on port 443 so you cannot communicate with our secure server and access our online products. We recommend that you contact AOL technical support.

Compuserve's browser (Spry) does not support SSL protocol and cannot be used to access our product section. However, your connection to Compuserve is actually PPP and supports the use of third party browsers (such as Netscape).

Prodigy's internal browser supports SSL protocol and should be able to access our product section. However, some Prodigy customers have recently reported "proxy errors" which are preventing them from accessing our products. We recommend that you try different access telephone numbers or contact Prodigy technical support. If you purchase a report through Prodigy and receive an error after confirming your purchase, please contact our webmaster immediately.

Please note: The above information was received directly from our customers' correspondence; we have difficulty contacting these online services directly. If you have more accurate information, please send a message to our webmaster.

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Product Questions

Products Available on this Web Server

Currently, we're offering the Business Background Report which provides useful information on a company's history, business background of its management, special events and recent newsworthy items D&B has learned of, and a business operations overview. This product is delivered online in seconds and costs just $20.00 U.S. per report which is billed directly to a major credit card.

See also:

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Can I get other D&B products?

If you have done business with Dun & Bradstreet before, you are probably aware of the numerous information products that we offer. Credit information, mailing lists, reference manuals, and CD-ROMs just to name a few. We are diligently working to increase the variety of products available on the Internet and additional services will be available in the coming months.

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Can I get a free sample?

We have no facility for giving away free Business Background Reports, even for first time customers. We have provided a sample report on a ficticious company to illustrate the information provided. Although the amount of information available on each company varies, this sample can help you determine the utility of this report for your information needs.

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Saving or Printing Dun & Bradstreet Reports

Our old system used to return a Business Background Report as a dynamic page making it difficult to print or save with Netscape. If you are a veteran customer and experienced this frustrating error, we have good news for you!

The Product Access engine now writes your report into a static HTML file on our server. The filename is returned to your browser using an "HTTP redirect" and the report is automatically loaded for you. This means that your can print or save these reports reliably without having to repost the form!

In addition, you can place bookmarks on these reports and refer to them easily for 3 days following your purchase. We suggest you bookmark each report immediately in case your system crashes before you read it.

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If this information does not answer your question, please contact D&B.

Billing Statement Discrepencies

If you have received your credit card statement and have a question regarding incorrect purchase amounts, multiple billing, or any other billing problems, please call (US customers only):

Dun & Bradstreet Customer Service
1-800-234-DUNS extension 101

International Customers: please contact your nearest Customer Service Center.

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Registration Failure

If you are having problems registering with our online service, please select one of the following links for further information:

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E-mail Address Validation

All new registrations, US and International, are subject to an e-mail address validation. In addition, coorespondence forms which prompt for your e-mail addresses also perform a validation of your entry. This simple algorithm verifies the syntax of the e-mail address to reduce the frequency of typographical errors. It is still possible to enter an invalid e-mail address.

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If this information does not answer your question, please contact D&B.

City/State/Telephone Validation (US customers only)

Most access on the Internet is performed anonymously and many users try to enter bogus information on our registration screen. Since Dun & Bradstreet is responsible for the information provided in our products, we require you to provide accurate information in case we need to contact you.

To protect ourselves and our customers from potentially fraudulent users of our system, we cross validate your city, state, zip code, and telephone number to ensure they all map to the same physical address. This means you cannot enter your home address with your business telephone number. Please return to the registration form and verify that your information has been entered correctly.

This validation is performed using the official US Postal Service town database and is very accurate. If your registration is being rejected, here are some hints to try before contacting us:

Occasionally, a new town or area code is created before we are notified about it. If you have tried all the above hints and still encounter problems, please send all of your registration information, as well as the error message returned by the system, to our webmaster.

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Problems with the Search Engine

Find the appropriate error message below:

Matches Returned

Missing DUNSNUMBER Application Processing Error

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Credit Card Rejection

We use the same national banking network to authorize your credit card purchases that your local merchants use. The only difference is that YOU enter your information rather than swiping your card in a cash register. Most authorization failures result from mistyped information or temporary network outages. Here are some points to remember when entering your credit card information:

Authorization Failure Messages

Billing Confirmation Messages

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System Availability

This Web server available on a regular basis, 24 hours per day, 7 days per week except during the following maintenance period:

Sunday 5am to 5pm Eastern Time

This maintenance period is reserved for our servers and network to be refreshed and updated. The system won't always be DOWN during this period, however, there is no guarantee that it will be available.

Please DO NOT contact us when the system is unavailable. We suggest you wait about 15 minutes and try again. This system is monitored continuously and if it's down during normal hours, we work diligently to correct the problem. The system usually is up and running before we have a chance to read your e-mail reporting the outage.

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Request Not Fulfilled Messages

Here are some examples of messages that may be returned on the Request Not Fulfilled screen.

Missing required value indicates that the form you just submitted contains a required field which you have not provided a value. The field name is provided to help you resolve the error.

Must be numeric indicates that the form you just submitted contains letters or punctuation in a field that only allows digits. The field name is provided to help you resolve the error.

Below minimum length indicates that the form you just submitted contains a field with a value that is less than the minimum allowable length. The field name and minimum length are provided to help you resolve the error.

Exceeds maximum length indicates that the form you just submitted contains a field with a value that is greater than the maximum allowable length. The field name and maximum length are provided to help you resolve the error.

Supplied value not acceptable in this field indicates that the form you just submitted contains an invalid value in a restricted field. There should be some indication of the possible values on the form (such as U.S. state abbreviation). The field name is provided to help you resolve the error.

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Critical Error Messages

A Critical Error message is returned when our product access engine encounters an abnormal condition (programmers refer to these as bugs :-). We're only human and can't anticipate every possible situation.

If you receive one of these messages, please complete the following form to report the problem. Don't worry -- you didn't do anything wrong or break anything. In fact, we are happy to receive and resolve these messages because each one moves us closer to a bug-free system!

Please report critical errors by submitting this form. This information will be forwarded to our webmaster. We prefer to reply via e-mail; we ask for your telephone number because this identifies you in our system. 

Your name:        
Telephone number: 
E-mail address:   
                  (please use standard Internet format)

Tracking Code:     (very important!)

Search Criteria:  

Operation:
Enter any other information that may be helpful, then press

Contacting Dun & Bradstreet

Based on your previous selections, we recommend that you complete this form and send your question or problem to our webmaster. We prefer to reply via e-mail; we ask for your telephone number because this identifies you in our system. 

Your name:        
Telephone number: 
E-mail address:   
                  (please use standard Internet format)
If you are having registration problems, please include the following:

City or Town:     
State:            
ZIP Code:
Describe your question or problem below, then press