Artifact Signing: organization identity validation fails repeatedly with no reason exposed, while the same entity passes Apple's organization verification

Question

Problem

Four organization identity validation requests for a US-registered LLC have

failed in Azure Artifact Signing (East US). A fifth is currently sitting at

Action Required, asking for representative identity verification.

That representative identity check has now failed twice. Per the FAQ only three

attempts exist, and exhausting them ends onboarding permanently, so I have one

irreversible attempt left and no information to spend it on.

**The portal has never displayed a failure reason for any of the five requests,

and no email has ever arrived at the primary or secondary contact address.**

What has been ruled out

Both failed identity attempts were made under identical conditions:

• A US driver's license bearing a residential address (not a passport)
• Microsoft Authenticator installed, signed in, and already holding a Microsoft Entra Verified ID
• Direct residential connection - no VPN, proxy, virtual machine or remote desktop
• Same device and browser both times, no account or document changes between them
• Legal name, date of birth and address are populated by Microsoft from the ID scan itself, so they cannot mismatch the request

The only substantive feedback ever received, from Vetting Operations on an

earlier request, was: "Company/partner name or address is mismatched." A printed

copy of the company website carrying the matching legal name and address was

submitted in response. That request then failed.

The contradiction

On the same day as the most recent failure, **Apple accepted an Organization

enrollment for this entity** - verified against the identical legal name,

identical registered address, and the identical D-U-N-S record that Azure has

rejected four times. Apple verifies organization identity against the D-U-N-S

record and entity registration, and had previously rejected an enrollment of

mine over one incomplete field.

So the entity, address and D-U-N-S record demonstrably pass strict third-party

organizational verification as submitted.

What support has said

An Azure support case is open. Front-line support has stated in writing that

"no outcome is documented in the thread" and that the specific rejection reason

is not visible to them.

Questions

1. How does an applicant obtain the validation team's determination when the portal exposes nothing and support cannot see it?
2. Does a failed representative identity verification consume an attempt when the underlying organization validation is what was actually rejected? If so, can attempts consumed that way be restored?
3. My support case is categorised as "Trusted Signing - Preview", while the service is GA as Artifact Signing. Is there a legacy preview onboarding path that validates differently, and could an account be stuck on it?
4. Is there any documented cause of organization validation failure for an entity that is current in its state registry and has a matching active D-U-N-S record?

Happy to provide validation request IDs, subscription ID and the support case

number to a Microsoft engineer privately.