AirBnB ID verification process is without a doubt the worst piece of technology I have come across in a VERY long time. What should have been a very simple booking took over 2 hours and at least 10 attempts at getting the ridiculous verification and payment process completed. I will not be using AirBnB again.
I have not had to go through the tortuous ID verification process before. At first it required me to provide a photo of an official document - I have a scanner on my computer but no camera, and my mobile phone has no online connectivity where I live.
So I scanned my document and emailed it to my ipad as this was the only way I could get it onto a device that could take a picture (the second step in the process). After 4 attempts and four failures because the photos could not be verified, I abandoned that process and took my mobile (cell) phone to a place where I had internet access (a 15 min drive). There I tried to the same thing with a photo and a selfie.
This had the same problem. So then I downloaded the AirBnB App onto the phone and tried to use that. I had not taken my passport/drivers licence with me at the time so another 15 min drive back to get them, and take photos and another selfie.
The passport did not work at all and the instructions to use the ePassport functionality were unclear and ambiguous. So I used a drivers licence, the lining up was tricky and the first attempt read wrong dates and stated the licence had expired - tried again and this time managed to finally get the photo and selfie to finally be accepted.
The next step was payment and I successfully accessed via Paypal login and processed the payment until I hit another error stating there was a mismatch with currency?????!!!! So I was forced to go through the process again this time with a credit card and after 2.5 hours and a very frustrating time I finally got my booking processed.
I am a reasonably tech savvy person, and understand the need for security and ID verification for hosts, however this total abomination that AirBnb are using for this process needs some serious review and simplification, it is clunky completely non-user friendly and anyone without my resolve and determination to complete the process would have given up.