Today my beloved friend and fellow trainer got permanently banned over a wayfarer-related issue. NianticAaron says his account was linked/connected to an account that used bots, but I know 100% sure that he never used bots. He was always walking outside every day very religiously, every event he would grind for 8-14 hours non-stop grinding like crazy and hosting meet-ups with everyone and making sure the community came together.
Aaron accused him of spoofing, but the fact is he personally doesn’t have any of the hardwire or knowledge on how to use bots at all.
Can Niantic please unban him and give access to his account again? He was close to 2 billion XP, he spent a lot of money on the game and he was always legit grinding outside and contributing positively to niantic and the game. His username was 812SuperfastAce
When he submits an appeal he only gets an automated answer from a bot, so that doesn’t help him.
Everyone in the communities where he played can vouch for him, knowing that he was never apart of any bots and how committed and diehard he was to this game and to niantics mission.
Niantic will not be able to disclose any confidential information about talks with another player to anyone else. If your friend has already filed an appeal, and Aaron has already communicated with your friend, then there is nothing that can be done here.
I don’t always agree with Aaron, but I am absolutely certain he would have been looking at overwhelming evidence. Your friend may not be revealing the entire story to you.
That’s incorrect. We do not deal with any in-game issues. All our conversations with anyone revolves around Wayfarer.
As @cyndiepooh mentioned, we will not be able to disclose any details of our conversation with any player. Having said that, I can assure you that we review every appeal with due diligence and in light of conclusive evidence available to us.
Sorry I meant you accused him of using bots/being connected to bots, while I and many others know that he would never touch or do anything bot related, in fact he’s very anti bots, anti spoof and anti everything that breaks the ToS, in fact he was one if the first, if not the first player to announce that someone was using bots to you personally back in 2023.
Also he’s not getting any fruitful replies from the appeal team, mainly automated replies and message saying the appeal is closed, even though nothing is disclosed, and he still doesn’t understand what he has done wrong as he has never used any bots and is not associated with them in any way.
Is there any way you or someone else, can have a one on one conversation with him to solve this issue? He has spent lots of money, time, effort resources and everything in order to contribute positively to niantics mission and this game is his everything, he is a very alarming and concerning situation.
Mod note: edited post to be in line with forum rules.
Click here to file an appeal against Wafarer’s action for violations. If he is sending it to the Pokémon GO appeals office, he will not get a valid response.
Please help your friend find a good therapist. This is an overreaction to not being able to play a game, and being banned may be the best thing for him.
It can be quite difficult for users to determine which Niantic organization is accusing them of what type of activity or why an email, a strike, or a ban has occurred.
Being banned, OP’s friend doesn’t have access to a lot of the communication vectors. PoGo support seemed entirely un-useful.
Apparently the trouble is in fact related to Wayfarer, and the friend wished to dialog.
We are not 100% sure that this is a Wayfarer related ban, as only the friend the OP is trying to help would know this. Ban emails do detail where the ban comes from, and spoofing and/or use of bots could be done with almost any Niantic product.
And the auto response is very typical for email communication; while many companies have gotten rid of email as a form of contact, some, like Niantic, still use it. When you send an email via one of the forms, you will always receive an auto-reply letting you know the email has been received and is in queue to be reviewed by a human. I used to work in email customer service, and this was what you’d get to let you know that your email was received.
@LeanderGoethals I would ask your friend if they can share the original ban email with you, as that may better help to direct them to the correct appeals team to contact. If the ban came from PoGo, they would need to contact the PoGo appeals team, not the Wayfarer appeals team. If it is a PoGo related issue, they will want to use the following link to appeal.
Lastly, the use of bots has been a part of the internet since way before Niantic and any of its products existed, so I’m sure that there have been bot issues from time to time, and before 2023. I bet there were users setting up bot accounts back when PoGo launched in 2016 or trying other things to try and game the system.