I also rate Gandi. I'm also surprised to hear of shenanigans.

But the GP's story is about identity verification; I don't see that as a particularly egregious "shenanigan".

Can't speak to that specific complaint, but Gandi has had other issues in the past.[0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22001822

There’s no excuse to ask for an ID scan to “verify identity” when you can buy a really really good quality automatically generated fake id scan for $5.

Would maybe be defensible if they asked for actually verifiable information, like a dump of the cryptographically signed contents of your chipped passport (haha).

To repeat: I've never been asked to provide anything of the sort to Gandi.