Hello all,
We have a lot of apps for a lot of different clients in the stores, some dating back at least 3 years.
All this time we had no problems distributing the apps, but since a few weeks Apple have started to reject our apps. The reason being because they deem we have the wrong distribution channel, which is the App Store.
It's true that our app is behind a login and is only interesting to employees of our clients. For that reason we are absolutely willing to comply to their guidelines stating that the app is more of a custom B2B app—as opposed to an app for general public.
To this end we made our own solution to implement any future apps as custom B2B apps and distribute them via the correct channels.
However...
Apple also started rejecting apps which are already in the App Store, with the same reasons; the distribution channel of the apps is incorrect and therefore not suitable for being distributed through the App Store. Again, we are more then willing to comply and definitely agree with their assessment. This is, however, also where the problems start.
We cannot change the availability of the apps to just a private distribution to an organization because Apple has disabled the option to do so. Meaning the very same reason they reject our app is the one thing we cannot fix by ourselves. We asked multiple times how to do this and we were met with the solution to: "make a new app and new name". Absolutely ridiculous.
Still, we are willing to make a new app and build the binary etc. to do so. But since the app has already been in the store we wanted to delete it, free up the bundle ID and name, create everything anew and then distribute it privately as custom B2B app. But Apple refuses to delete our bundle ID. Again, absolutely ridiculous.
They leave us hanging with a sub-par solution where it's unexplainable to our clients that the reason we're troubling them in great lengths is "because of a disabled radio button" in the Pricing and Availability tab on App Store Connect. Not only does this force us to have a double administration of ID's in our systems, this also forces an install of a new app (which is essentially the same) on all phones for all our users. Thereby losing all their data for—at least on the user's side—absolutely no apparent reason.
We're really tired of having these issues only with Apple, not the other platforms we're developing on. I think it's time we receive options to delete bundle ID's because of these issues.
Is there an other solution for us, Apple doesn't seem keen on helping us. We're posting here in the hope this receives traction and creates a better solution.
