Apple ID problem: "Account Recovery In Progress: Your account will be ready for recovery in 12 days."

Hello. I am assisting my uncle with his iPhone 8+ problem. I am helping him update his password in iTunes and then I recently found out that less than a month ago, he received this email from Apple:

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Find My iPhone has been disabled on Ernest's iPhone (2).

With Find My iPhone disabled, this device can no longer be located, placed in Lost Mode, or remotely erased using icloud.com/find or the Find My iPhone iOS app.

In addition, your Apple ID and password will no longer be required for someone to erase, reactivate, and use your iPhone.

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So I followed the instruction by going both to the iforgot.apple.com site as well as his Find iPhone app on his iPhone 8+. Yesterday, we tried it and it said that it will take a day for him to change his password. Today, I was going to assist him as it was a complete day, but now it is saying this:

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Account Recovery in Progress

Requested ----- Verifying ----- Ready [Requested & Verifying have green bars, Ready is greyed out]

Your account will be ready for recovery in 12 days.

At that time, we will send instructions to the phone number your provided.

If you are signed in on a Mac or iOS device with this account or have access to a friend's device, you may be able to reset your password immediately. Learn How >

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I tried this on his iPhone's Find iPhone app, his iPhone's Safari browser (went to iforgot.apple.com) my own MacBook, my own iPad and they're all saying his Apple ID will be ready for recovery in 12 days.

Now I find this ridiculously insane. I even clicked on the "Learn How" so that my uncle can "reset his password immediately" but looks like this is not the case.

This is so infuriating, when my uncle is basically updating his password on his very own phone and it's still not working.

Is there any other solution? Or will my uncle have to wait 12 days?

Thank you very much for any help and assistance you can provide.