Redditor Chojinki, known on the Play Store as developer Hashtiv, recently told the internet about a rough time with Google’s developer support team concerning an app that was suspended from the Play Store. The app in question, Bit Trainer – A Live Cryptocurrency Simulator, got kicked out of the Play Store for spam. Chojinki got a nebulous email with a link to a fairly vague policy that his app didn’t violate any tenets of. In response, he reviewed his app in conjunction with the guidelines, and laid out exactly how each of the guidelines does not apply to his app. Google stood by its original decision, and the app is still not available in the Play Store. Meanwhile, Chojinki has been repeatedly referred to a mysterious “policy team” within Google, and Bit Trainer has been down since the end of May.
Chojinki shared some of his chat logs with ground-level agents in Google. This team is unable to help resolve his issue any further beyond simply sending it out to the Policy Team, according to both chat logs that were posted up. In one chat, he states that his issue has been forwarded before. It doesn’t take much longer for the agent, Mia, to say that if Chojinki had no other questions then she would end the chat, despite him bombarding her with questions regarding the issues. He told all of his frustrations to another agent by the name of Bella, and things went similarly, though Bella did not abruptly leave the chat. Chojinki got a bit flustered and asked Bella to note on the forwarding file that the customer has received no help at all, and there is still radio silence from both the policy team and Google at large. It is worth noting that Chojinki’s other app, social networking tool Hashtiv, is still up on the Play Store.
Google’s developer advocacy efforts help to reward top developers and attract new talent, but the company has historically lacked on all fronts when it comes to support, at least according to anecdotal evidence from around the web. In the case of developers, the policy team that can help solve issues like this one has no official, direct method of being reached. Since there are a very large number of ways that developers can get their apps thrown off Google Play or even get banned entirely, it’s easy to see how this can become very frustrating, and even a damper on one’s livelihood, in short order.