Our app got rejected the second time because of 4.3 design spam reason. Need help

Question

Created Aug ’20

Replies 7

Boosts 0

Views 2.6k

Participants 9

Hi,

we submitted our app for review after 1 year of development, and 4 months waiting to finally make payment and enable developer account.

After review, app was rejected for 4.3 reason design spam as there are already lots of dating apps in the store reason.

We have a unique audience and features (of course also common features like other dating as cannot be avoided chat, some like function etc), and a lof of users were looking forward to our ios version, they are still using the web and ask us every day when they can use ios app.

App got rejected and what is unfair is that we can mention at least 5 apps that are total trash in terms of features that do exist in app store same category and are our "rivals" published without any problem.

We submitted after 2 weeks a totally new concept for the app, new menus, animations etc to make it more unique so is not anymore under design spam.

Now it was rejected again for same reason and we are out of ideas what to change for the next submission.

Our designers and developers read all the documentations multiple times and we still have no idea what to change more.

The only thing I can think of is to keep add more features...

Any help with this or ideas from other devs ?

As I mentioned what is totally unfair is that a lot of other apps are published!!! and are very basic, even without reset password functionality, nothing totally empty.
This is completely crazy and unfair when you put 1 year work, would be totally fine if same game rules would be applied for all apps

Boost

Answer 1

john_321 OP

Dec ’20

How did you finally managed to submit the app?

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Answer 2

naticio OP

Mar ’21

I found this Apple pratice ridiculous. It's like the gov saying:
"we cannot have new supermarkets, we have too many already and the new ones offer the same functionality"
"we cannot have any more dry cleaners, we have too many already....etc)
you get the idea

This practice favors the big players as reduces competition, and is unfavorable to the customers as the new competition cannot help to lower prices. it favors monopolies

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Answer 3

Tom101 OP

Jul ’22

Did you manage to get the approval?

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Answer 4

fersonality OP

Dec ’22

It seems like you got the approval for appstore.. Can you share the story? We are facing the same issue... and it is really frustrating... we spent almost one year for our app.

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Answer 5

Cheescake95 OP

Mar ’23

same here, I highly believe my App's feature set is unique but still get the 4.3 spam rejection. Really have no idea how the review works, and they never give reason but copy of 4.3 guidline. Also no reply from the appeal.

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Answer 6

Khaosk OP

Mar ’23

There seems to be an uptick in recent comments regarding this issue, I wonder if Apple has renewed this behavior lately. Two of my games have been stuck in spam hell, despite the fact that I worked hard on making it work in the Apple system, the store pages, and worked directly with the team to make sure all my in app purchases worked, including giving them detailed instructions on how to trigger every single in app purchase, as if they were my QA team.

I'm actually wondering if we can't get a group together to at least threaten some kind of class action. It seems odd that Apple can charge $99 dollars a year to develop on their ecosystem, and then pick and choose which apps get on their app store (not pertaining to adult or mature content, but rather, simply finding preference to whomever or whatever companies it chooses). If Apple got rid of the membership fee, they'd probably have a better case. I'll do some research. Email me at kugala_bugala_at_hotmail.com if you'd like to give me your story. It would help a lot if we want to get this fixed.

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Answer 7

andrisole OP

Apr ’23

Same story. It’s ridiculous. Spent 2 years developing and Apple just want to shut down my app/business. Imagine you open a restaurant, invest $100,000 in it - and then government says “We have too many restaurants, so we are closing yours…”.

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