[londons_explore]

Perhaps for buying a ras-pi specifically, they'll require SMS verification.

SMS is hard to create large numbers of fake accounts because getting access to large numbers of phone numbers that aren't all in the same block is pretty hard.

[pauldd7]

There are several services that offer exactly this for 6-20 cents per verification, with a wide variety of numbers and geos, VOIP or Real ATT/Verizon Mobile etc, and easy to use API's.