The amazing story of the remarkable Reverd free spam call detector app
Just call me Mark. Below is the true story of the Reverd app; the saga, the pain and the victory. Reverd free spam call detector app was finally approved and released on 31 January 2015 and has 1,500 downloads at the time of this writing without any marketing. People appreciate it.
The Idea
When hit by an annoying, well known scam our phone started ringing several times a day with annoying idiotic messages. We had to do something. In response, we created a website allowing people to post complaints regarding similar harassing phone calls they receive so everybody knows. The online community complaints list created awareness in the community, but it couldn’t protect people from receiving unsolicited phone calls. Government operated Do-Not-Call lists are useful to some extent, but they cannot protect from overseas scams and international call centers. Our website was receiving complaints from people of all walks of life: workers, doctors, students, parents, families and the elderly. Everyone seemed to be affected by unsolicited harassing phone calls coming from all directions. Unscrupulous marketers, crooks and thieves are constantly trying to reach your phone regardless of your local time, day or night. Unwanted phone calls are disturbing and annoying. They generate stress and anger. The fight against phone spam seemed hopeless until one day a friend of mine sparked the idea of creating an app that everyone can download to protect themselves and their phone against harassing calls.
Development
I embraced the idea for an app to stop unwanted phone calls. Some online articles suggest that app development should be fun, affordable and even quick — none of these proved true in our case.
The Good Things:
The demand for such an application was obvious. Clearly everyone wanted one thing: to get rid of harassing phone calls “Go away and leave me alone.” Smart phone users were looking for an automatic and efficient way to stop harassing phone calls. None of the existing apps provided the level of automation and convenience users desired. I took the challenge and started looking for a capable app developer.
The Bad Things:
All the developers I contacted from around the world suggested that such an app is not possible for the iPhone. Responses like this from experienced developers made me choke “I’m not sure it will pass Apple AppStore reviewers… it can be rejected randomly depending on the reviewer”. This appeared to be a really challenging situation: on one hand; everybody wanted to get rid of harassing calls automatically, on the other hand; no one dared to work and provide a solution to the problem. What now?
The Luck (you need to succeed)
Never give up, find a way to keep going… As a last resort I posted a message on the local Craigslist to make sure I’ve tried everything. In the very few responses I received there was one fellow stating clearly in a short message that my project is feasible, he can do it and he is interested to work on it right away. It was hard to believe what I just read, the first and only positive response in more than a month long search, coming from a developer living in the same city... We discussed details and the work started.
Our uncommon approach allowed us to achieve true automation via a unique process backed by a constantly updated community supported database of freshly reported harassing phone numbers. The Reverd app works seamlessly in the background with minimal user input. The user does not need to manually mute each and every unwanted number. The whole community protects you by reporting harassing numbers. Once a number is added to the community complaints it will be banned on all phones using the Reverd app. Thus, the whole community is working for you and everyone is contributing to the community complaints database. The result is a constantly updated automatic system to stop unwanted phone calls regardless of where they are coming from: whether from a marketer, spammer, fraud or prank.
The Trap
It is real and it is there… remember what developers said earlier: “It can be rejected randomly depending on the reviewer”. The Reverd app for iOS was rejected four times by reviewers. Among a few technical requests we corrected immediately, we were asked to change not only screen names but also file names to avoid words such as “blacklist” and “blocking”. These were not written “requirements” anywhere in the Guidelines or in any other documents. Anyway, we kept changing and changing to satisfy reviewers. The changes involved image revisions, text revisions, text translations in all seven languages and testing again and again… until the last rejection which was obviously unreasonable and ungrounded. A catastrophic and depressing response after all the work and sacrifice we went through.
The Victory
We have done our best. Our product was in compliance with the rules and regulations. We made all the changes as requested, but our streak of rejection remained unbroken. We were forced to aim higher. A letter went out to the Legal Department. A few days later our app was approved and available to the public. The Reverd free spam call detector app for iPhone was released on 31 January 2015.
The Remarkable App
The app made a reality what seemed impossible a year ago. It provides the automation and comfort people want via a unique process (patent pending). None of the prior apps satisfied the users’ expectations and desired level of automation.
Words of wisdom
To developers: Never give up. Creating a good app is only part of the job. Fight to deliver for your users.
To users: Good things happen. We were fortunate to release the app you asked for to free up your phone. Protect yourself from annoyances and unnecessary stress with the Reverd app. Spread the word. Most importantly give us feedback. Share your experience and ideas on how to improve it. We will listen to you. Also, please spend a few moments to rate the app. Customer ratings are vital for apps. Thank you!
Let good things happen.
Mark
reverd.com
