Now, three months later, our app was suspended again for exactly the same reason, against which we had already successfully appealed.
We tried to appeal once again, which was declined this time. The only difference from a few months ago: the person in charge for our case has changed.
It seems that you are completely dependent on the person assigned to your case, leading to arbitrary instead of consistent decisions.
It even went so far that our app was in a quantum state for some time because it was approved and suspended at the same time. This seems to be an indication, that the organizational process for app suspensions at Google doesn’t work quite right.
Do you have any suggestions how to move forward?
In general, I’m quite unhappy how app suspensions work for the Google Play Store. When your app got suspended, developer access to your app is terminated as well. This means, you can’t implement any changes requested by Google. Instead you have to upload a new app id, losing all downloads and reviews, and have to start all over again from the ground up.
Compare this to suspensions in Apple’s App Store: The relevant update of your app is held back until things are clarified. Then the update will either be released or you will have to implement some changes. However, you won’t lose the reputation you have built up to this point. Using Linux since decades, I'm not suspected of being an Apple fan boy. But in this case, this seems to be a process which is more developer friendly.
I’m also looking for alternatives to the Google Play Store for Android. Is F-Droid also recommended for closed source apps? I was also checking out the Huawei store, to reduce the dependency on Google at least a little bit. Anything else?