Apple ID account recovery

So,

Im quite confused here.

Been doing IT support for years and never had an issue resetting a forgotten Apple ID password.

This time however, I've hit a brick wall. A few days ago I noticed that my customer wasn't signed into his iCloud account on any of his 4 devices. I asked for his password and the ones we thought it was didn't work. After 2 or 3 failed attempts, I did the usual password recovery option. Strange this was, the primary mobile number associated with the account never received the verification code.

I think I then tried again which led to the account being locked. Well, it was easy to unlock the account because the verification code did come for that but then back to the same issue of not knowing the password. Was then greeted with the Account recover page where it asked for credit card details. Put those in and it said it would take 24 hours for account recovery to be possible.

Well. almost 5 days later, not a single email or sms from Apple. Yesterday I tried the forgot id page again and the same window saying that we need to begin the account recovery process.

What the heck is going on here? Been doing this stuff for years and honestly never got stuck like this before.