271–280 of 530 posts
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19092039
A $50 payment to the ombudsman, refundable if the ombudsman decides in the customers favor, would discourage the obmudsman being overused.
That said, I’ll offer an alternative history...
The author hired developers who have previously uploaded malicious code to the Play store, or actively tried to circumvent restrictions on it. That developer uploaded an app, Google banned their account and all accounts that they have been contributors to.
This is a reasonable action for Google to take. It’s not like the Play store account had a long history of playing by the rules, with 1 developer being added right at the end and behaving badly. This is an account that is essentially fully tainted.
When appealed, the reviewer looked at these facts, and upheld the closure, as I believe would have been the right action.
In terms of getting further information, I would guess that Google are vague for 2 reasons: to provide more information may open them up to being sued more easily (rather like how most companies won’t say why someone was fired, or give performance information in referrals), and secondly in Google’s mind this developer is malicious, so they don’t want to provide any information that could be used to further circumvent the ban.
Now, this does put the developer who has been essentially scammed but is acting honestly in a tough position. My advice to them would be to push hard on the developer advocate and marketing side of things. Ideally they’d have done this from well before release and had a good working relationship with someone on the inside throughout the process. People say Google are bad at support, but this does happen, Google can be great at developer engagement, as can Apple, etc. I’d frame it in terms of getting a new account set up, guaranteeing that the account will not be delegated to any external entities, and probably pushing hard on the fact that the app is out and doing well on iOS. I’d push for building a relationship and being open with communication, as these are exactly what the hypothetical bad actor that Google believes in would avoid. It might take some time and perseverance, but I reckon that might be enough.
I actually just got my Google Ads account suspended because I forgot to update my billing address before adding a new card. The suspension was for "suspicious billing activity", tried appealing twice with the correct billing address, and was told the suspension is final (some automated email) both times. They won't take my calls because the account is suspended, which leaves me not being able to advertise on the #1 s…
My google ads account has been suspended for 19 years. I'm still waiting for the results of my appeal...
The question I always have with this stuff is this: To attract developers, these platforms make some promises. A "review" process for supposed violations of TOS causing cancellations is always among them. But to me these "reviews" always seem either completely faked or some version of a lowest-level employee simply restating that the algo has made its choice and they are powerless. More incriminating is that every ti…
So says you. This is what the ToS say: Google may terminate this Agreement with You for any reason with thirty (30) days' prior written notice. In addition, Google may, at any time, immediately suspend or terminate this Agreement with You if: (a) You have breached any provision of this Agreement, any non-disclosure agreement or other agreement relating to Google Play or the Android platform; (b) Google is required to…
The irony's that the mentioned notice was sent to the junk folder by Gmail. (I'm assuming Gmail from the screenshots)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The real problem is when you can't reasonably choose to do business with someone else and move on, as they are free to do with you. Something I learned the hard way when I first started out in business is to never make your business dependent on a single entity. Whether it's a supplier, or a publisher, or a telco, or whatever. They are all single points of failure, and unless you're a huge business, one failure can b…
> Something I learned the hard way when I first started out in business is to never make your business dependent on a single entity. Seems impossible. Assuming you're an internet business, how did you make your business not dependent upon your domain registrar?
This is awful and I feel terrible for them, but a lot of alarm bells went off when I read this: I then attempted to login to my ‘Google Developer Account’ for the first time. Previous to this our app developers were the only ones to access our account to upload and update our app for us It sounds like they violated probably one of the first requirements of the ToS not to share account credentials. From there ... real…
In this case, I would imagine the Google Developer Account would presumably give them access to some level of information about the customers of their application.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> unwilling to read the ToS, even less to try to comply with them. So... a sane human being? Someone who can't afford to spend literally hours reading legalese and trying to figure out what it means?
This is in a business context. If you think you don't have to read the TOS, then you better have your lawyers doing that for you.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The real problem is when you can't reasonably choose to do business with someone else and move on, as they are free to do with you. Something I learned the hard way when I first started out in business is to never make your business dependent on a single entity. Whether it's a supplier, or a publisher, or a telco, or whatever. They are all single points of failure, and unless you're a huge business, one failure can b…
> Something I learned the hard way when I first started out in business is to never make your business dependent on a single entity. Seems impossible. Assuming you're an internet business, how did you make your business not dependent upon your domain registrar?
If anyone reading this remembers that story, I would very much appreciate a link.
I'm also in the process of moving away from my gmail for this reason, specially with Inbox going away now.