I’m posting this on behalf of my flatmate Daniel @danieldreimer . He had been banned from Maps and the Community. After weeks of adjusting and editing his reviews and pictures, he appealed and received the notification that his access to his Maps profile as well as the Local Guides community was reinstated.
While he can post reviews on Maps again, the access to this community is still blocked. He wasn’t able to get a human response from Maps after re-submitting the appeal form (only copy pasted messages that everything should work now) and Google One support also couldn’t help.
He posted a help message on facebook in the Local Guides group. No help there either, but a few people said that they had exactly the same issue after being UNbanned, so we assume it is a bug, but there is no one to talk to to bring it to anyone’s attention.
@happychappy thanks for making the effort to ask for help.
@AngieYC I didn’t know who else or how to contact. I tried Maps Appeal Form, Maps Feedback Form, Google Support, multiple help forums, Maps on Twitter, Local Guides Group on facebook (other people described having the same issue there) for months and nothing worked. I had tried clearing all caches/history etc on multiple browsers and multiple devices, nothing worked. And I was told not to sign up here with a second profile, although now technically I was UNbanned I didn’t know if it was technically not ok to re-signup.
@MortenCopenhagen Thanks a lot for the article, it actually was really helpful in cleaning up my reviews, much appreciated. Although I did not quite like the tone of it making it sound like it is all the user’s fault and it is all easy breasy, when in reality being blocked without further comment affects a lot of people and impacts people’s mental health who gain a lot of their identity from being a local guide. Fair enough that sticking not (or not reading) the guidelines puts the responsiblity firmly into the user’s hand, I get that. But from there on out the whole thing is a non-communication guessing game. Why is the picture/review against the guidelines? What do I need to do? Why is there no human clearly responding to messages? Why does not even Google One Support has a way of escalating further issues to Maps? To me, this all points to a wider issue around customer support and structure with how Google Suites are interconnected and related. I work myself in customer support and I realise there is a gap between what users want and complain about and what is possible in term of governance and resources, but this seems all unnecessarily complicated and “mean” even. Given that most people really don’t know what they have done wrong, compared to people being deliberately malicious or facetious or being trolls or being abusive in reviews, which from what I read in other forums is not the case.
So in the end (after 5 months), I am not sure what made it reappear now, because I didn’t take any other action than asking @happychappy to post here. Anyway, can’t wait to get posting and reviewing again.
I read your comments. First I thought you criticized my effort to make a tutorial for suspended Local Guides. On second thought, your critique seems directed towards Google, right?
Keep in mind I deal with suspended local guides almost on a daily bases, and the majority do have a hard time understanding (and accepting) that their problems are most likely due to their own actions. So to get this point across, I know from experience that it is necessary to be quite blunt and explicit. When dealing directly with individuals this often has to be repeated over and over before it sinks in. A negative side effect is that those who get it quickly can easily get offended. Please accept my apologies for this.
@MortenCopenhagen No apologies necessary. Haha I bet there is a lot of whining and moaning (I include myself in this) and a blunt approach from your end is probably effective and will remedy that. Im just saying if Maps implemented clearer communication you probably would have to deal with less drama and much less quantity.
And it wouldn’t even take that much resources and effort. Instead of an email saying “you have been banned, now go to hell and never talk to us again your worthless human” (Im paraphrasing) it would literally take ten minutes for someone to implement three more sentences in the automated message and reduce fallout and work for you by surely more than 50% (Im guessing), something like: “you have been banned because of XY, link to guidelines. Please have a look here: link to your post with tips. If you fix your reviews, you are allowed to appeal within xy days, link to appeal form. Please be more mindful of guidelines in the future”.
Like I said it seems so wildly user unfriendly and so harshly communicated that it makes me wonder if it is clumsily designed/communicated on purpose, however the reason I cannot guess.
Again, your post was immensly helpful thanks again. I just wanted to point out that there is so much to improve of how this is responded (or not) to by Maps.
Very nice of you to have helped your friend and congratulations that you got the issue sorted out and now he is back to connect again. A good local guide you are indeed. Thank you for doing that.
welcome on board again. Although I haven’t been suspended before and I try not to get into troubles but I imagine it’s not a nice experience especially when you really want to contribute and interact on connect. Good to have you back and nice to meet you both on connect. Happy guiding and keep active.
@SholaIB Thank you! It was indeed an unpleasant experience. As a tip, my mistake was in the pictures: no selfies, no identifying pictures, no children.