Getting error "ssn cannot be modified" when trying to upgrade customer from unverified => verified

#1

I have an unverified customer I’m having issues upgrading to verified.

I’m providing the following fields:
firstName, lastName, address1, city, state, postalCode, type, email

Receving the following error:

{"errors":[{"code":"ReadOnly","message":"DateOfBirth cannot be modified.","path":"/dateOfBirth","_links":{}},{"code":"ReadOnly","message":"Ssn cannot be modified.","path":"/ssn","_links":{}}]}

But I don’t believe DateOfBirth and ssn have been provided for the customer prior to this attempt.

If I attempt this update without ssn and dateOfBirth, I receive the following:

"message":"A server error occurred. Error ID: f9430ad9-2db6-4296-967e-068795715cba."

Checking the customer record, I see that the address has been added to the customer, but they are still in unverified status. Presumably, this is because they’re missing the ssn and dateOfBirth.

@spencer @shreya @kmoreira do you have any suggestions on how to proceed?

#2

Update - I do get a response from the API if I only provide the following fields:

firstName, lastName, address1, city, state, postalCode, email

The response shows the customer in retry status, however I still cannot add an ssn or dateOfBirth.

Here’s what’s weird: if I make a GET request for that customer, it shows them as being in unverified status, not retry. If I attempt to initiate any transfer for this customer, though, I get the error Sender Restricted, which usually means they’re in document or retry status.

So somehow this customer is in both retry and unverified status. And they’re stuck there because I can’t add ssn and dateOfBirth.

The customer ID is e4ec0535-37fc-4641-a5b0-a2a74a0a8294

Any help is appreciated, thanks.

#3

Hi @dtj – Thanks for the ID and detailed requests/responses!

it appears that omitting the SSN in the upgrade request is what caused the Customer to be in a bad state. We’ve updated the Customer account so that you’re able to now add the SSN and DOB.

Would you be able to give that a try and let us know if you’re able to get the information through?

#4

Thanks @shreya - I was able to get the customer verified on this attempt.

I mistakenly sent through the state as the full state name instead of the abbrev when I first tried to verify. I did send through the ssn and dob, but perhaps they got read as null/undefined since the state caused an error?

The other confounding factor may have been that the customer had a pending transfer yesterday, which was processed this morning. Is there something that prevents a customer from going into retry status when they have a pending transfer?

This is a bit of an edge case for me, since customers are usually being verified programmatically prior to their first transfer - so the state mistake & transfer prior to verification won’t usually happen. A lambda function timeout caused me to have to do this myself.

But I’m hoping to understand why this seemingly weird situation happened - why would a customer show retry status on a POST request, but unverified status on a GET request? Why can’t ssn and dateOfBirth be edited for a customer that’s in this Schrödinger’s cat-like state?

#5

Hi @dtj – Apologies for getting back to you late.

You were right about SSN and DOB not being the reason the Customer was stuck in this “bad state”. The process you have in place for upgrading an Unverified Customer to a Verified Customer is accurate and should work as expected.

Also, any pending transfers won’t affect the Customer’s verification either, so you’re fine there too.

Upon deeper investigation, we found out that our call to our identity verification provider failed for some reason when we received the upgrade request. This caused the Customer account to be stuck in this state where it is regarded as a personal type Customer but with an unverified status instead of retry or verified.

We’ve created a ticket for our team to handle this rare edge case more gracefully.

I’d like to apologize for the confusion this has caused, and the trouble in getting the Customer verified. You shouldn’t expect this see this error in future, but if you do, please let us know!

#6

OK, thanks @shreya !