Member Accounts Stuck in “Pending Verification” – CloudFront & ECS Blocked, Support Ticket Unassigned for 24+ Hours

I understand your frustration with the account verification issues that are blocking your deployment pipeline. This is a known issue that can occur with AWS accounts, particularly when trying to create certain resources like CloudFront distributions.

When you receive the error "Your account must be verified before you can add new CloudFront resources," this indicates that AWS requires additional verification for your member accounts before allowing CloudFront resource creation. This verification requirement is a security measure AWS implements, and it applies even if your IAM users have AdministratorAccess policies.

Here are some steps to help resolve this situation:

1. Focus on a single support case rather than creating multiple tickets. Having several open cases on the same issue might actually slow down the resolution process.

2. When creating your support case:

• Select "Account and billing support"
• For Type, choose "Account"
• For Category, select "Account Activation"
• Provide clear details about your verification issue and the specific error message

3. In your support case description, include:

• The specific error message you're receiving
• The impact on your business
• Your AWS Organization ID and the affected member account IDs
• A specific date and time when you can be reached

4. Ensure all your contact information in the AWS account is up-to-date and verify that your payment method is valid, as unverified payment methods can sometimes cause similar restrictions.

5. You might also consider requesting a Service Quota increase for CloudFront Distributions as an alternative approach:

• Create a new Service Quota increase case
• Select "CloudFront Distributions" as the limit type
• Choose "Web Distributions per Account" as the quota
• Provide a brief description of your use case

While 24+ hours without a response is concerning, support cases are typically answered in the order they're received. If you need immediate assistance, you might consider upgrading to Business Support temporarily to get faster response times, though this should not be necessary for account verification issues.

Rest assured that once your account is verified, you should be able to create CloudFront distributions and ECS resources without this error.
Sources
URGENT: Multiple Unassigned Support Tickets for Account Verification - 3+ Days Without Access | AWS re:Post
Can not create Cloudfront distribution | AWS re:Post

Hello,

I understand your concern with the time taken to review your cases looked into. While cases are looked into in the order they're received, there is always the option to request a call or chat on account and billing related cases for more time sensitive issues such as this. More details about requesting a case can be found here: go.aws/phone-support.

— Kraig E.

Hi there,

Thanks for providing that info. I've reached out, internally, to our team handling your support case.

They do answer cases in the order received, so response times can vary based on volume and severity. We appreciate your patience as they work to help with next steps. You can access your support case to check for further updates, and to ask questions, here: http://go.aws/support-center.

- Randi S.

Another 2 days and still no response/resolution. I understand there being a long delay if the support request is a technical issue that is likely a misconfiguration by the customer. But this is just a request to get the basic functionality of a newly created account/organization working. Is AWS this understaffed that they can't get new customers onboarded/functioning in a timely manner?

Another update,

It has now been over a week since I've opened the original support ticket. Still no resolution. I had to sign the account onto business support (which we don't really need) just to get a response.

If I was trying to do something complex - or needed actual support I could understand it taking this long. This is still just a request to get the account setup/verified/functioning at the most basic level.

In case you find yourself in the same situation and think that signing up for business support might help. It didn't help me.

All it has gotten me is someone touching the cases and telling me that it might be some time before someone from the Accounts can look at it and attempt to propagate the permissions from our main account to the organization sub accounts.

I'm not sure what's going on with Support - seems like if they can't solve the issue within 2 minutes they put you back into the queue to wait another 24 hours - feels like no ownership has been taken - like their metrics are all about speed - not outcomes. It has now been 8 days since the original ticket was opened.