Identity document scanning in Mews Operations is failing intermittently

Update timeline

1. investigating Jul 23, 2026, 12:33 PM UTC

   We are currently investigating reports of an Mews identity scanner malfunction. The Mews team is actively working to identify the cause, and we will provide updates as soon as possible.

2. investigating Jul 23, 2026, 01:58 PM UTC

   Since 23 July, 10:53 UTC, scanning identity documents in guest profiles is failing intermittentlyl roughly half of scan attempts return an error. This is caused by rate limiting at the third-party service that processes document images; we have confirmed the issue is not related to any Mews release and are working on restoring full service. Workaround: retrying the scan usually succeeds after one or two attempts.

3. resolved Jul 24, 2026, 08:37 AM UTC

   Identity document scanning has been fully operational since 16:35 UTC. Between 10:53 and 16:35 UTC on 23 July, roughly half of document scan attempts in guest profiles failed due to rate limiting at the third-party service that processes document images. Retrying a scan or entering document details manually worked throughout the incident, and no data was lost. We apologize for the disruption and are taking steps to prevent a recurrence.

4. postmortem Jul 29, 2026, 10:07 AM UTC

   **Problem** On 2026-07-23T10:53:00Z, identity document scanning in Mews Operations began failing intermittently. Approximately half of scan attempts returned an error, while the other half succeeded normally. The issue affected hotel staff scanning guest identity documents \(passports, IDs\) during check-in. **Action** We immediately investigated the issue and identified that the third-party service processing document images was rejecting some of our requests. We published a Statuspage update within 20 minutes advising customers that retrying a failed scan would typically succeed after one or two attempts, and that manual entry of document details remained available throughout. Our team worked to diagnose the root cause, confirming the issue was not related to any Mews code release or configuration change. The service recovered fully by 2026-07-23T16:35:00Z. **Causes** The third-party service that processes document images intermittently blocked requests from our infrastructure, treating them as automated traffic. This was not caused by exceeding any usage limits — our usage was well within normal thresholds. The blocking occurred at the provider's network edge layer rather than at the API service level, which is why it affected only a portion of requests. **Solutions** The issue resolved on its own after approximately five and a half hours. No customer data was lost, and the vast majority of affected users \(93%\) were able to complete their scans successfully by retrying. To prevent recurrence, we are taking the following steps: 1. Establishing a direct support relationship with the provider so we can escalate issues more quickly in the future 2. Evaluating alternative document processing providers to reduce our dependency on a single third party We apologise for the inconvenience caused to hotel staff who had to retry document scans during the affected period.