I'd like to raise something about the review process itself rather than any one application.
I'm a competitive rower and I've been a paying Strava subscriber for 5+ years, with several hundred activities on the platform. Strava is where I train and where my club lives. I mention this only to say that I came to the API as someone invested in this ecosystem, not as someone passing through.
I have submitted two applications for increased athlete capacity. Both were declined. In both cases the only response was the standard automated email listing five possible reasons — the app isn't complementary, usage isn't optimized, there are security or privacy concerns, or it doesn't comply with the API Agreement or API Policy — without indicating which, if any, actually applied.
Between the two submissions I read the API Agreement, the API Policy and the Brand Guidelines line by line and made every change I could identify. The second submission was declined the same way, with the same template. So I have no way of knowing whether I fixed the right thing, fixed nothing relevant, or was declined for a reason I can't see.
I understand that increased access is not guaranteed, and I'm not writing to dispute the decision. My difficulty is narrower: without knowing which of the five reasons applies, a third submission is guesswork. The email itself says resubmissions aren't guaranteed a different outcome — which is fair, but if nothing distinguishes a good-faith fix from an uninformed one, the process gives a developer no way to converge on approval.
There's also a structural problem with the athlete cap. An application sits at its limit, so new users can't connect, so the integration can't accumulate the usage that would demonstrate it deserves a higher limit. I don't know how an app is expected to break out of that loop, and I'd genuinely like to understand what reviewers expect to see.
My questions:
- Is there any channel — paid, escalated, partner-level, or otherwise — where a declined application can receive specific feedback? I would be willing to pay for a review.
- When a submission is declined, is it because a reviewer identified a concrete issue, or can it also be a capacity or prioritisation decision unrelated to the app's compliance? Knowing which would change what I do next.
- Is there a recommended interval before resubmitting, or a signal that would make a third submission worth filing rather than repeating the same outcome?
I'd rather fix a specific problem than keep guessing, and I suspect other developers here are in the same position.
Client ID:248030