Waystop declined even though meets criteria

General Discussion
1

When submitting a Wayspot Appeal, make sure to include as much of the following information as possible:

  • Wayspot Title: MCDONALD’S MCCAFE

  • Location (lat/lon):(17482448 , 78501114)

  • City: Hyderabad

  • Country: India

  • Screenshot of the Rejection Email (do not include your personal information):

    1000009112
    10000091121440×3216 200 KB

    1000009111
    10000091111440×3216 262 KB

  • Additional Information (if any): Clearly we all can agree that Niantic Norms to nominate a waystop includes well know restaurants and also coffee shops so I have no idea why this was declined or rather rejected

2

McDonald’s fall under this rejection criteria.*

A generic business, chain, or franchise that is not locally unique

*generally, there may be some circumstances where it’s not generic but what’s been written doesn’t convince me of this.

In addition, you can Appeal within Wayfarer, this area of the forum is intended for when you report a Wayspot and it doesn’t get removed but you believe it should, and can then use additional evidence for Niantic to take another look.

1 Like
3

Hello,

There are some chains that have paid for sponsored Wayspots in the past. McDonald’s did have a sponsorship deal with Niantic in the past in a few different countries, including Canada, Japan, European and Latin American countries. McDonald’s paid Niantic to have these Wayspots put up at some of their locations, but not all. Being this was a business deal, McDonald’s would have to pay Niantic again if they wanted to add any more Wayspots to any more of their restaurants.

Unfortunately, any chain business that has some sponsored Wayspots cannot have any new Wayspots added by players. In the US city where I live, we have some Starbucks stores with sponsored Waysots, while the newer stores (ones that opened after December 2016) do not have them, as the sponsorship deal Starbucks had expired.

India is also an interesting case when it comes to Wayspots. Niantic has used many third party maps to add Wayspots to the country, as there are not that many, and there have been many chain businesses that have gotten Wayspots because of this. I have also heard of chain convivence stores in India getting Wayspots because of this action that Niantic took.

So, even if a chain business has some sponsored Wayspots that they paid for in the past, this does not mean we as Wayfarers are able to add any new ones to the map. And even if Niantic were the ones to add the Wayspots to help map out a certain area with few of them, we are still unable to nominate anything that isn’t eligible. Sorry for any misunderstandings.