Originally Posted by zkzkz

This stuff is all part of their "Know your customer" policies that they're required to have and follow by regulations (which are themselves mandated by the Patriot Act amongst others so sometimes you'll get agents saying they are required to do this by the Patriot Act which is not really true but kind of indirectly true). Some banks have more or less sensibly written policies and others have kind of insane policies which if you trigger are quite hellish to satisfy.

Chase in particular is one of the most annoying to try to satisfy. There's a huge long saga here on Flyertalk somewhere of someone who was caught in a Kafkaesque set of requirements he was never able to satisfy from Chase for months before he gave up. I can't find it at the moment but I'll add it if I can find it later.

Personally if it's at all convenient I would ask if you can visit a branch and present any documents they need there. That way you can bring extra docs and let them ask for whatever they want and also get a branch manager to sign off on a signature card and sign any copies they want to authenticate them etc . It seems the most likely to end up being a single iteration and faster than USPS.