Local Mall Requested Removal of Pokestops 4 Years Ago
Unhallowed
Posts: 4 ✭✭
34.112359, -117.534473 Rancho Victoria Mural
34.111990, -117.533104 Daily Chores
34.112428, -117.530961 Soul Records Mural
34.112438, -117.530149 Fountain at AMC Victoria Gardens
34.112330, -117.529726 Ray Charles, 1930 to 2004
34.111920, -117.531812 Brent Le Count Water Fountain
34.111799, -117.529594 Americana Mural
34.111191, -117.530856 Paseo Route 66 Fountain
Located in Rancho Cucamonga, CA
There are at least 29 portals that are blocked from becoming Pokestops because the mall was in discussion with Niantic to have all their stops removed back in 2016. I believe what happened was they removed all of the active Pokestops and on a Portal Sync about a month later 20 new ones popped in.
To my knowledge the mall hasn't complained about the game since, either they asked for the Pokestops back or they no longer care about us playing on the 20 stops we have left. I've reached out on all channels available to me and got no response yet from the mall. They've probably got bigger problems at the moment.
I've seen almost every one of these portals in Wayfarer that are ultimately going to be voted down as duplicates. Wasting many people's time and submissions.
We are a suburban community with very few PoGO destinations. We desperately need Niantic to act on this.
I've reached out to support and have gotten nothing but copy pasted responses about how to find Pokestops.
It's simple: Either the mall wanted zero Pokestops in 2016, and a portal sync went berserk. Solution: Delete the remaining stops.
Or: The mall asked for them back in 2016, but Niantic forgot to unblock the 29+ original Pokestops. Solution: Add the missing stops.
There must be records of the communications that led to the removal and return of Pokestops, and I'm confident that Niantic got it wrong when they returned them. If they could just look back and make the appropriate changes our community would be very grateful.
Thank you for listening to the ravings of this desperate PoGO fanatic.
Comments
The mall will need to contact Niantic again. However, players should not act as intermediaries, no mater how well intention.
But I believe they had contacted them, that must be why most of the Pokestops returned. It doesn't make sense that none of the original stops returned but all of the underlying portals were allowed to make new stops except to say Niantic made a mistake in 2016 and until Wayfarer the community just didn't notice what exactly was wrong.
Probably because the original stops were a problem do to the initial popularity of Pokemon Go. After they were removed, the popularity died down and new stops took their place. The mall may not have requested the new ones removed because they simply didn't notice them, the new stops weren't a problem, or the tenants complained about the original removals.
I know for a fact the tenants complained about the removal. It made our local newspaper. The marketing director for the mall says the removal was temporary in the article below.
By her saying it was temporary, I'm 100% certain that the mall asked for the stops to return, and Niantic obliged by allowing new portals to become stops, but forgot to reactivate the original stops, and appears to have made it so new submissions don't go live in PoGO. There's even a portal way outside the mall at a restaurant that isn't live in Pokemon GO.
We've got a sort of similar situation locally. A state park has a working demonstration farm. The farm has 2 full time employees, one who actually is the owner/manager, and the other an employee of some sort. The manager ASKED me to submit a stop there, and I checked and found that it was already a portal. I then heard from locals that the employee had complained about the pogo players and so I assume he asked for the stop removal. I've tried to contact the manager back to see if she can ask to have the stops restored and new stop are now going in but old ones are still not there....