It's a problem for sure. I am not unhappy with the agencies I have been using but recently wanted to meet a touring indie who would not see me.Lots of experience but no recent indie references.I'm not sure what to do either.

I went to Preferred411, searched for providers in my area, looked at ones that said "Newbie Friendly", and got in touch. I had to give my name and employment information in lieu of references, no big deal to me.

Once I had seen two providers that would vouch for me I could join Preferred411 for free for 6 months. I contacted the next provider through Preferred411 and she just had to look at my profile and check out my provider okays to verify that I'm legit, and I didn't give her any personal info.

What I have done is to politely email the lady in question and explaining the problem. I found one that worked with me on alternate means of verification, and managed to satisfy her verification within the same day and get an appointment for later that evening. If you are willing to work with them many ladies will work with you if your polite. Of course I did check out fully all of her reviews with VIP details before offering my information.
Now this did not work with everyone I tried but I had made a list of more then one lady I would have liked to see and tried them one at a time. After seeing the first lady I now had a referral to go back to the early failures with.