Hi everyone,
I'm looking for advice from developers who have dealt with Guideline 4.3 in a situation involving a previously terminated Apple Developer account.
We have a legitimate travel booking application that was previously submitted to the App Store under our original Apple Developer account.
Unfortunately, that developer account was terminated, and despite multiple appeals/support requests, we were unable to have the account restored.
We subsequently created a new Apple Developer account and attempted to submit the same legitimate travel application under the new account.
The current application has a significantly redesigned UI and UX, but the mobile application is still based on the original React Native codebase. The backend, APIs, travel integrations, booking system, etc. are our existing platform and are not copied from another application.
The submission is now being rejected under Guideline 4.3 with wording indicating that the app shares a similar binary, metadata, and/or concept with apps previously submitted by a terminated Apple Developer Program account.
My question is specifically about understanding what Apple may be identifying in this situation.
Has anyone experienced a similar case where:
- The same legitimate product was previously submitted under a terminated developer account.
- The developer then had to submit it from a new account.
- The new submission was rejected under 4.3 because of its relationship to the previous app/account.
If so, were you able to determine whether Apple's concern was primarily:
- the binary/source-code similarity,
- the previous developer account association,
- metadata/assets,
- or the fact that it was essentially the same product?
I'm considering rebuilding the iOS client from React Native to Flutter as a genuinely new implementation while keeping our existing backend/API platform.
Before investing significant development time in that rewrite, I'd like to understand whether changing the mobile technology would actually address this type of 4.3 issue, or whether the previous account association can still cause the rejection regardless of the framework.
I'd also appreciate any experience with getting a specific answer from App Review about what triggered the 4.3 rejection in cases involving a terminated account.
Thanks in advance.