Wow, I've never been able to get a real person at Google to review a case of supposedly breaking ToS. My Google account got suspended for "traffic pumping". I didn't know what "traffic pumping" was at the time but after looking it up, it looks like they thought I was a bot for a phone carrier trying to commit fraud: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_pumping
For reference, I haven't ever used the Google account for anything like Google Duo, Allo, Hangouts, etc. There was an appeal system linked in the message saying "You broke the terms", but when I filled it out, about 24 hrs later I got a response saying "You can't appeal if you broke the terms", which seems inconsistent at best.
I managed to track down a Google support employee and basically told him "Hey, it should be obvious that I'm a real person and not a bot for a phone carrier". His response at first was "The appeal should work, let me know if it doesn't". I told him that it didn't work, and his response was "Well we're not allowed to help you if the automated system says you broke the terms. You must have broken the terms."
Happy for you getting anything out of them other than a brick wall, at least.
In the early 90's, if I were to tell people that a mega-corporation would seek to take over all the world's information, and they would subject users to this Kafkaesque bureaucratic nightmare treatment straight out of the movie "Brazil," they'd think my brain was taken over by "Paranoia" the role playing game.
I had to do the same thing recently for my app when it was blocked from the MS App Store... We were eventually excepted again and I'm about to go through the gauntlet again and try to release ...
Jeremy says he wrote "something very close to" the following for his appeal, how would you have written it?
> "Mommy Saver Plus was removed for 'deceptive ads' which is a little silly because there is no ads in the app. The attached screenshots have nothing to do with Mommy Saver Plus."
I think it would be a bit too easy for someone a google employee reading this to go 'he's saying he doesn't consider them ads, and ranting about the screenshots out of frustration'. That's not a reasonable thing for the google employee to do, but it is a possible one. I think I would prefer something like
> The evidence attached for removing "Mommy Saver Plus" are screenshots from a different app by a different developer. "Mommy Saver Plus" was removed for having "deceptive ads", but unlike the app in the screenshot "Mommy Saver Plus" doesn't have any ads, so clearly this was done in error.
> Please see the attached screenshot of "Mommy Saver Plus" for comparison.
So if I get this correct, the app ID of com.mommysaverapp.plus is correct but the screenshots they use to justify their app removal are not from that app?!
I googled the app in the screenshots and it shows in google but now it 404s, just like Mommy Saver Plus. So it seems they removed the correct app also.
Do apps have a GUID or some other actually unique identifier they can use? It seems a huge oversight to not have or use such an ID, even if it's something as simple as a cryptographic hash of the binary(ies).
(Not an Android developer. Thought of starting but never did --- for mostly different reasons, however.)
Your mistake was writing a "two sentence appeal" and expecting it would do anything.
Appeal again. But this time, put some real effort into it. Spend more than 2 seconds on it. Really make it clear that your app does not contain ads and the screenshot is not your app.
I've never worked in customer service but this seems wrong to me. I would expect that you would be able to communicate more effectively by saying the single core thing you need to say, because the more words you add, the less likely they are to miss that part, or even to not read anything in your message at all.
If a message is really really important, then you don't make it short and you don't pad it with fluff either. Instead, you say the simple thing you need communicated, over and over again in different ways, together with supporting evidence. Then, anywhere their eyes land on the page, they'll understand your message.
I wrote a passive-aggressive email. I posted this. I tweeted at them (first tweet ever).
I'm not sure what worked, but something got through. Thanks all for the support.
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