I am having difficultly buying bitcoins. I would like to buy them fairly quickly. I set up an account with Dwolla but to confirm the bank account with the microtransactions looks like it may take days. I am still waiting for the microtransactions to appear. It looks like coinbase uses the same system but should it take days to officially set up?
Don't listen to the above. I just set up my bank account on Coinbase a week ago. They can actually verify your bank account instantly if you give them the username and password of your online bank info. After they verify just change your password at the bank. Done.
This is true for some, but not all, banks. Generally it's larger banks that can use this pass-through authentication.