I had this happen with AT&T. Someone bought a new phone on my account with a phone upgrade, they transferred my service to the new phone, and I had to go through a ton of headache getting them to give me my service back to my old phone and trying to figure out what happened.
At the end, they acknowledged it was fraud. Additionally, added guards on the account with an additional passcode and wording stating that a person must confirm with me specifically before anything like transferring services is done again.
It did however blow my mind that something like that could happen and if someone intended on getting access to my accounts, the situation could have been much worse.
I wonder if you were to just use a burner credit card (e.g. one of those virtual ones you can generate over your existing credit card) and use that to sign up. Then send them an email saying that you are cancelling the subscription and cancelling the credit card the subscription is with as well. I wonder if this would allow you to not waste your time dealing with their ridiculous process. The only potential issue I could see would be someone sending you to collections because they record you as cancelled when your payments start to fail.
I've been holding out upgrading for the last 2-3 years because I really don't want the Touch Bar. I have one with my work laptop and I only ever accidentally hit it. Having the physical music and volume control buttons on my current laptop is a significant usability improvement for me.
At the end, they acknowledged it was fraud. Additionally, added guards on the account with an additional passcode and wording stating that a person must confirm with me specifically before anything like transferring services is done again.
It did however blow my mind that something like that could happen and if someone intended on getting access to my accounts, the situation could have been much worse.