GTIN exemption app for P.O.D.

I’ve spent the last few days going back and forth with Amazon support over this. My products have been “approved,” but they won’t accept my application because the photos of my items are not “real life” photos.

The way their support has explained to me, I need to order one of each type of item from my p.o.d. platform to take photos of to upload with my application, mockups are not allowed. I don’t have the funds to order 16 different items, even at the base price, just for photos.

Am I missing something, or is there a different way? My P.O.D. is Printify, Google and YouTube have been less than helpful in this specific situation.