I tried to submit a ban appeal last night, but got bot responses that were no help in understanding what happened.
I’ve never been suspended on Pokemon GO before. I don’t use any unapproved devices, I don’t fly, I don’t do any sort of hacking or anything like that. And I was banned for 30 days for an honest mistake that I made on wayfarer. I’ve never made a nomination before, so I really didn’t know exactly what I was doing. The pinned location was in a pond a ways away instead of at the business, and I think I was banned as a result of that. I’m genuinely heartbroken about this and missing GO Fest. It was an honest mistake that I learned from. Again, I’ve never been suspended or banned before, and this mistake landed me a 30 day ban and missing GO fest. Something our whole community has been looking forward to. My username is AtollaNomura
I’m hoping to have this looked into, seeing as I’ve never had any disciplinary action taken against my account before, and I wasn’t trying to do anything malicious. It was a genuine mistake because I didn’t understand how to use Wayfarer.
Welcome to the forum, and I am sorry it is in this situation.
A human staff member always replies if you use the “contact us” link in the email to submit your appeal. You may have been seeing a bot automated acknowledgement email of receipt of the appeal.
A staff member here will often initiate a DM with people who post here about bans to discuss privately. You can wait for a staff member to respond. Their user names will begin with “Niantic”.
If you would like for forum members to try to help you figure out what happened, you can post the emails you received, and we can go from there. One of them should have a specific example of an infraction.
I really did try to get the pin to match where I was. I remember it trying to put the pin down the road, and I hit some button and thought it re-centered it. But I guess it didn’t. Then it got denied for abusive language, and I appealed it because the language wasn’t abusive, it was just what the company does. And at that time I had no idea the pin was so off. Someone on Reddit helped me figure that part out. I was just trying to do my boyfriend a favor by nominating it for him, and I didn’t know what I was doing. I thought it was as easy as taking pics of the place, lining up the location, then it’s done. But apparently I messed something up.
The rejection reason text string when abuse is flagged is very misleading. It would have been used for the misplacement, not the text. I am so sorry you wasted an appeal on this mistake. Hopefully when staff see this you can explain in private conversation.
I really, really hope so. This game has gotten me through the worst mental hole and string of bad life events that I’ve ever been through. I at least catch a few Pokemon every day, if not more. And it helps me feel better. I would never intentionally risk my account for anything. I play by the rules and respect them as well. This is all a big mistake on my part probably.
I was the one who assumed it was about the “abusive language” because I read that on the original nomination when it was first denied. I had no idea about the location being off until I went to Reddit. That’s why I appealed it it with the mindset of “abusive language”
When staff have sent a DM, you will see an envelope by your initial in the top right corner. It looks like this when I get one:
They will make a comment on this topic and tell you they are sending one.
Depending on how you have your settings, you may also get an email notification.
The majority of the times I see, it is NianticAaron who addresses these issues, and he is usually online on the forum in the morning for me - about 9 hours from now.
I was just stupid. That was completely my fault. I had no idea what Wayfarer even was, and I saw something on a pokestop about adding to the stop. So I sent in a cute pic of my dog at the pokestop while we were having an event. I’m not disputing that because that was just me being dumb.
You can wait for staff to explain further but from what i have seen so far, you can take this as lesson in future. Becareful with what you submit and pin placement because it will have effect on both wayfarer and pogo account.
