Questionable decision by Niantic's appeals team

So I submitted appeals for two rejected submissions a few days ago. They were both for identical objects, and one was accepted and the other rejected.


The objects in question were this:



A large banner containing an old photo of an important historical event in the city’s history or a historical company that was important for the city’s growth and development. These banners are located in the shared lobbies of multi-family apartment complexes. There are a lot of them, as they’re all individually numbered and I’ve found ones that were numbered as high up as 94. They were mostly rejected by reviewers because reviewers are stupid and think anything on residential property of any kind is ineligible, but I’ve been having a lot of success getting them appealed by Niantic.

But I cannot comprehend why, when I appeal two of these very similar banners, one gets rejected and one gets accepted. Especially when the rejection reason given is as nonsensical as this:


“It does not meet criteria because it is a regular informational board”. First of all, no it’s not. Secondly, what defines a “regular” informational board and why is that a bad thing? It’s a unique banner showing an old photo of the founders of Vrijdag Premium Printing, a printing company that has existed for over 100 years. About Us | Vrijdag Premium Printing It’s also located in the shared lobby of a multi-family apartment complex, as can be seen in the image below, so rejecting it for PRP reasons is also complete nonsense.

So can anyone from Niantic do the right thing here and revert that appeal rejection?

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Is my memory serving me correctly did you post about these way back on the old forum when you were considering submitting?

I think this is good. I remember some questioned the mounting method of the the panel but that is just a question of style and it’s clearly designed to be permanent. I successfully submitted something not dissimilar as I think they meet criteria.

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Yeah, I’m pretty sure I did. I’ve been trying to get these things into the game for years now. Recently I’ve taken to appealing the rejected ones since I don’t really have anything better to use my appeals on, and that seems to do the trick quite well. I think I’ve gotten about six of these accepted on appeal so far, and then Niantic goes and randomly rejects an appeal for one of these for absolutely nonsensical reasons.

Thank goodness my memory still functions :joy:

They were good then and they are good now.

The problem with humans is that we are human and therefore inconsistent. It is important to have checks to ensure those inconsistencies are minimal. Hopefully this example can be part of that quality improvement process.

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@admins