Postmortem: How a Google Play Store Policy Violation Got Our App Suspended for 1 Week

On March 12, 2024, our team received the email every Android developer dreads: a notice from Google Play that our productivity app, TaskFlow, had been suspended for violating the Google Play Developer Policy Center rules. The suspension lasted exactly 7 days, during which our app was unavailable to new users, and existing users lost access to premium features tied to the Play Store billing system. Below is a detailed breakdown of what went wrong, how we resolved the issue, and the steps we’ve taken to avoid a repeat.

Background: Our App and Policy Compliance History

TaskFlow is a task management app with 120k monthly active users, 15k of whom are paid subscribers. We’ve been on the Play Store since 2021, with no prior policy violations, and we conduct quarterly audits of our app to ensure compliance with Google’s policies. We thought we were in the clear — until we weren’t.

The Violation: Unclear Subscription Terms

The suspension notice cited a violation of the Subscriptions policy, specifically section 4.1: "Subscription terms must be clearly displayed before the user completes a purchase." Google’s review team found that our 7-day free trial sign-up flow did not explicitly state that users would be charged $9.99/month after the trial ended, unless they cancelled at least 24 hours before the trial period ended.

We were shocked — our sign-up flow included a link to our terms of service (TOS) that detailed this information, but Google’s policy requires the key terms to be displayed directly in the purchase flow, not buried in a linked document. Our TOS link was in 10pt gray text at the bottom of the screen, which the review team deemed insufficiently prominent.

The Suspension Timeline

• March 12, 10:00 AM PST: Received suspension notice via email and in the Play Console. App removed from Play Store listings; existing users could not access paid features.
• March 12, 10:30 AM PST: Submitted an initial appeal via the Play Console, attaching screenshots of our TOS and arguing that the trial terms were disclosed.
• March 13, 2:00 PM PST: Appeal rejected. Google noted that the disclosure was not prominent enough, and linked to the specific policy section we violated.
• March 13, 3:00 PM PST: Updated our sign-up flow to include bold, 14pt text directly above the "Start Free Trial" button: "7-day free trial, then $9.99/month. Cancel anytime 24 hours before trial ends to avoid charges." Resubmitted appeal with screenshots of the updated flow.
• March 18, 9:00 AM PST: Appeal approved. App restored to Play Store, and paid features re-enabled for existing users.

Key Challenges During the Suspension

The 6-day wait between our updated appeal and approval was the most stressful period. We lost ~2k new sign-ups during the suspension, and our app store rating dropped from 4.7 to 4.5 due to user confusion about missing features. We also had to field ~300 support tickets from users asking why they couldn’t access their premium features, which strained our small support team.

Another challenge was the lack of clarity in the initial suspension notice — it only cited the broad policy section, not the specific issue with our disclosure. We had to guess at first what exactly was wrong, which delayed our initial fix by several hours.

Lessons Learned

We’ve made several permanent changes to our development and review process to avoid future violations:

• Policy-First Design: All new features, especially those involving billing or user data, are now reviewed against Google Play policies before development starts, not after.
• Prominent Disclosures: All subscription terms, data collection notices, and permission requests are now displayed in bold, high-contrast text directly in the user flow, not in linked documents.
• Regular Policy Audits: We now conduct monthly (not quarterly) audits of our app, using Google’s Policy Center tools to scan for potential violations.
• Appeal Preparedness: We’ve created a template for policy appeals that includes annotated screenshots, links to relevant policy sections, and a clear explanation of the fix, which cut our appeal resubmission time from 4 hours to 30 minutes.

Conclusion

A 1-week suspension may seem short, but for a growing app like TaskFlow, it had tangible impacts on user growth and revenue. The experience taught us that Google Play’s policy enforcement is strict, and that even well-intentioned compliance efforts (like linking to a TOS) may not be enough. By prioritizing policy compliance in our design process, we’re confident we won’t face another suspension — and we hope our experience helps other developers avoid the same mistake.