@paulc @jamesthomson As to this issue I don’t think it has to do with being acttively online or not as I’m seeing folks waking up to this issue. I think it’s more related to how Apple assigns AppleIDs and how they relate to back end server locations.
Here’s a link to an article I’ve writen about this that contains links to my journey’s through Apple Support on my similar issues.
https://warnercrocker.com/2023/10/05/time-for-apple-to-come-clean-about-icloud/