Hi All,
Need some advice here from anyone who has experienced this before... recently, an app that I been working on full-time for the past year got rejected by Apple during the review process. 😟
Basically, the app allows users to take surveys to earn points. Once they have accumulated enough points, they can redeem these points for a range of rewards. It was explained to me that the app was rejected because of 3 reasons:
1) Use of Apple product visual in a marketing campaign within the app
2) Requiring age and gender information from users during the registration process when it is not directly relevant to the app's features
3) Allowing for charity donations within the app when it is required that users get taken out of the app to a Safari browser to redeem charity donations.
I fully understand point 1) and have removed all mention of Apple products in our app with immediate effect.
However, I do not fully understand Apple's reply to me on point 2) and 3) thus far. Any efforts of explanation on my part have been to no avail.
For point 2), age and gender are crucial pieces of information that I need to collect for the core functionality of my app, given that my app sends highly targetted surveys to users of different age and gender profiles. Age and gender information are also used to provide a better user experience. We have built the whole backend of our system to use age and gender information to optimize user experience and in-app functionality. As such, users who have not stated their age and gender will simply not get any surveys from us. I would appreciate this if this is something that has been consistently applied to similar apps in the market with the same features. However, a quick search on the app store has uncovered several apps who are requiring users to provide age and gender information for the exact same purpose as mine. Have you come across cases where App Store Guidelines have been inconsistently applied across similar apps? I just feel that this is unfair and has caused an unequal competitive landscape.
For point 3), they require charity donations to be made outside the app. Again, I fully appreciate this as a way to prevent money laundering or fraudulent apps. However, as users only use points earned to redeem charity donations, there are no actual money transactions between users and us at any point in time. With this in mind, I am wondering why we are not permitted to do this. Again, a quick search on the app store has uncovered several industry-leading apps who are doing charity donations within the app itself. Why is it so inconsistent?
It's deeply frustrating as an entrepreneur to have spent so much time and money developing an app, only to see it get rejected immediately on issues that seem to be pretty prevalent in existing and similar apps in the app store. It creates a perception that Apple provides more leeway for the bigger companies while clamping down on the smaller ones. I might be wrong, but this is certainly the impression I have now.
Anyone with similar experiences?
Thanks!