Hello everyone,
I’m writing this post in the hope of hearing from other developers who may have experienced a similar situation, and to better understand whether this level of action without transparency is common.
Our company, VISION VENTURES TEKNOLOJİ TASARIM VE PAZARLAMA A.Ş., is the developer of Watchlabb, an app that has been available on the App Store for approximately six months.
Watchlabb is not an online watch retailer.
We do not own watches, buy watches, or sell watches.
Our platform simply connects independent buyers and sellers of authentic watches, allowing them to publish listings, create auctions, and communicate directly with each other.
From the very beginning, our goal has been to build one of Turkey’s safest marketplaces for authentic watches.
To achieve this, we have invested significant effort into protecting users by:
- Reviewing listings before publication.
- Rejecting counterfeit and replica watches.
- Verifying user identities.
- Moderating marketplace activity.
- Building a transparent and trustworthy environment for collectors and buyers.
In other words, our platform exists to prevent fraud, not enable it.
Despite this, Apple terminated our entire corporate Developer Program membership under Section 3.2(f) of the Apple Developer Program License Agreement.
The notice states that Apple has “documented indications of fraudulent conduct associated with your account.”
However, it does not explain:
- What specific conduct allegedly violated the agreement.
- Which feature, transaction, listing, or activity is involved.
- Whether the concern relates to a specific user.
- What evidence led Apple to this conclusion.
Before the termination:
- We never received a warning.
- We were never informed that our account was under investigation.
- We were never asked to provide additional information.
- We were never given an opportunity to explain or correct anything.
Even more confusing, our latest app update was approved through App Review just three days before our developer account was terminated.
This decision affects much more than our company.
We currently have approximately:
- 2,800 registered users,
- hundreds of active listings,
- ongoing auctions,
- professional stores operating on our platform.
Many businesses rely on our application to reach customers, and many users depend on it to buy and sell authentic watches safely.
As a registered company, we have contractual obligations, commercial partnerships, and responsibilities toward both our sellers and our users.
Having our entire developer account terminated without knowing what specific conduct Apple believes occurred has placed both our business and our community in an extremely difficult position.
We fully support Apple’s efforts to protect users and maintain the integrity of the App Store.
Those are values we share.
What we struggle to understand is how such a severe action can be taken without identifying the specific facts behind the allegation or giving a company the opportunity to respond before permanently terminating its developer account.
Has anyone else experienced a similar situation?
Were you able to obtain more detailed information from Apple or successfully resolve the issue?
Any advice or shared experience would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
Since publishing this post, the real-world impact of this decision has become even more apparent.
Several of our professional store subscribers, who have trusted our platform and paid to operate their businesses through Watchlabb, are now being affected.
Active auctions are still ongoing.
Hundreds of listings remain online through our web platform.
New users who wish to join using Sign in with Apple are no longer able to register.
Users who tap the App Store download link from our website are met with an error because our application has disappeared from the App Store.
For a company that has spent more than three years designing, developing, and building trust in this platform, watching new users encounter an error instead of our application is devastating. It directly impacts our reputation, our partners, and the confidence our users have placed in us.
What makes this even more difficult is that we still have no idea what Apple believes we did wrong.
We have submitted multiple appeals, contacted Developer Support, filed a reinstatement request with the App Review Board, and reached out through every official channel available to us.
In many cases involving App Review issues, developers are informed of the specific concern and given an opportunity to correct it. In our case, our entire corporate developer account was terminated without identifying the conduct, the evidence, or the specific issue that led to such a severe decision.
If there is genuinely a policy violation, we want to correct it immediately.
If there is a misunderstanding or an incorrect assessment, we want the opportunity to clarify it.
But without knowing what Apple believes happened, we have no meaningful way to investigate or respond.
This is what we find most difficult to understand.
We have invested our business, our team, and more than three years of work into Apple’s ecosystem because we believed in building a secure and trustworthy platform.
Today, we are simply asking for the same transparency and fairness in return.
At the very least, we respectfully ask Apple to identify the specific reason for the termination so that we can understand the concern and, if any issue truly exists, address it immediately.
One final point continues to confuse us.
Only three days before our developer account was terminated, our latest application update successfully passed App Review and was approved for release on the App Store.
If there was a serious issue with our application or business model, we respectfully wonder how that update could have passed review only days before the termination.
We sincerely hope someone from Apple’s App Review, Trust & Safety, or Developer Relations teams will review our case and help us understand what happened.