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A couple weeks ago Google removed one of my apps for the same violation. I rebuilt the same application with the SMS feature removed and the Play Store Develope

A couple weeks ago Google removed one of my apps for the same violation. I rebuilt the same application with the SMS feature removed and the Play Store Developer Console was very unclear and buggy on how to resolve the issue and get my app out of the rejected status. I spent the better part of 2 hours just to get everything up and running again and it's frustrating to know that you cannot easily contact anyone @ Google to ask for help.

StreamBright 8y ago
The #1 reason I do not recommend Google to work with for anybody. The users are just accidental for them.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  To be fair, the App Store review process can often be similarly opaque.
  - johnnyfaehell 8y ago
    Yea, but Apple has support. Google doesn't really do support.
- hajhatten 8y ago
  Youtube is another prime example of this. Just look how they've treated even their biggest content creators when it comes to copystriking and user comments (something they have no control over). Users are just a nuisance.
  - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
    I'm sympathetic with regard to Youtube. They have been effectively forced to adopt these policies by (1) major movie studios and (2) recent news coverage. There's too many videos for a manual process, so Youtube has to rely on algorithms and that's always going to be a broad brush.
mgkimsal 8y ago
"I rebuilt the same application with the SMS feature removed and the Play Store Developer Console was very unclear and buggy on how to resolve the issue and get my app out of the rejected status." Holy cow I had the same issue. Ended up having to just make a brand new one with a new name. It was a horrible experience. A version on a beta channel had SMS permissions requested, but there was no way to get rid of it. You can never just delete a version of something, only replace it. But you couldn't 'replace' until you'd 'fixed' the problem of the SMS perms. What they were asking for was a description of the fix, a login/password to view the fix, a video of the old and fixed versions in action and some checkboxes stating that I accepted the new SMS policy. Except... the existing versions didn't have any SMS functionality in the first place. There was no way to 'video' a fix for a problem that never existed. But it was worse, and I forget exactly how. I could never get it to accept a new uploaded version because an existing version somewhere wasn't 'fixed'. I think this was part of it. There was a 'beta' channel version, and regular channel version, and each one wouldn't accept an update of a new version because there was still a 'broken' version on the account somewhere. Truly a horrible experience.
- vbsteven 8y ago
  I was afraid of having to do exactly that, create a new app with a new name and move all of the customers over... I ended up fixing it eventually by somehow clearing all versions in alpha/beta channels and uploading a new fixed version without the SMS permission with increased version number multiple times, and then bubbling that up to production. For reference, we only used READ SMS permission in this app to improve the phone number validation process so it was easy to remove, with the downside that now it is harder for our users (mostly over 45) because they have to switch to the SMS app and back to complete the validation. Our helpdesk has seen an increase in support calls about the validation process since then.
  - michaelt 8y ago
    we only used READ SMS permission in this app to improve the phone number validation process What's wrong with the SMS Retriever API [1] which seems to be designed explicitly for this purpose? [1] https://developers.google.com/identity/sms-retriever/overview https://developers.google.com/identity/sms-retriever/overvie...
magduf 8y ago
>it's frustrating to know that you cannot easily contact anyone @ Google to ask for help. This is completely normal for anything with Google.

StreamBright 8y ago

The #1 reason I do not recommend Google to work with for anybody. The users are just accidental for them.

saagarjha 8y ago
To be fair, the App Store review process can often be similarly opaque.
- johnnyfaehell 8y ago
  Yea, but Apple has support. Google doesn't really do support.
hajhatten 8y ago
Youtube is another prime example of this. Just look how they've treated even their biggest content creators when it comes to copystriking and user comments (something they have no control over). Users are just a nuisance.
- Wowfunhappy 8y ago
  I'm sympathetic with regard to Youtube. They have been effectively forced to adopt these policies by (1) major movie studios and (2) recent news coverage. There's too many videos for a manual process, so Youtube has to rely on algorithms and that's always going to be a broad brush.

mgkimsal 8y ago

"I rebuilt the same application with the SMS feature removed and the Play Store Developer Console was very unclear and buggy on how to resolve the issue and get my app out of the rejected status." Holy cow I had the same issue. Ended up having to just make a brand new one with a new name. It was a horrible experience. A version on a beta channel had SMS permissions requested, but there was no way to get rid of it. You can never just delete a version of something, only replace it. But you couldn't 'replace' until you'd 'fixed' the problem of the SMS perms. What they were asking for was a description of the fix, a login/password to view the fix, a video of the old and fixed versions in action and some checkboxes stating that I accepted the new SMS policy. Except... the existing versions didn't have any SMS functionality in the first place. There was no way to 'video' a fix for a problem that never existed. But it was worse, and I forget exactly how. I could never get it to accept a new uploaded version because an existing version somewhere wasn't 'fixed'. I think this was part of it. There was a 'beta' channel version, and regular channel version, and each one wouldn't accept an update of a new version because there was still a 'broken' version on the account somewhere. Truly a horrible experience.

vbsteven 8y ago
I was afraid of having to do exactly that, create a new app with a new name and move all of the customers over... I ended up fixing it eventually by somehow clearing all versions in alpha/beta channels and uploading a new fixed version without the SMS permission with increased version number multiple times, and then bubbling that up to production. For reference, we only used READ SMS permission in this app to improve the phone number validation process so it was easy to remove, with the downside that now it is harder for our users (mostly over 45) because they have to switch to the SMS app and back to complete the validation. Our helpdesk has seen an increase in support calls about the validation process since then.
- michaelt 8y ago
  we only used READ SMS permission in this app to improve the phone number validation process What's wrong with the SMS Retriever API [1] which seems to be designed explicitly for this purpose? [1] https://developers.google.com/identity/sms-retriever/overview https://developers.google.com/identity/sms-retriever/overvie...

magduf 8y ago

>it's frustrating to know that you cannot easily contact anyone @ Google to ask for help. This is completely normal for anything with Google.