How do you contact the people at App World (for PlayBook)...

Question

Does anybody know who I need to talk to regarding App World (for the playbook). It really gripes me when you write a constructive review for an app, but the vender then removes it - surely, this should not be allowed (as it can lead to customers being mislead). I wrote the following review for the UK on-device GPS Map app, and guess what, it was removed!
Not as impressed as i thought it would be for the following reasons:1. Incomplete maps - I've lived in my house for over ten years, yet my housing estate doesn't show up on the map (I wonder if this is the case elsewhere???)!
2. Map scale - When I'm out and about, and zoom into the map, it doesn't always rescale itself; rendering the map useless.
3. GPS Location - Once the App finds your location, and you then move, it doesn't then replot your movement on the map; to re-establish your position, you have keep repressing the button - very poor!
4. Finally, the App just keeps crashing! Your using it, then it just switches off.
Considering all the above, and the price of this App (£9.99!), I am really disapointed. Please fix the issues identified or refund asap.
Cheers...

Answer 1

Possibly the best bet is simply discussing it here.  RIM tends to like such feedback to be filtered through the forum, I presume because allowing much direct contact would overwhelm them (these days, with negative feedback!).  It's also reasonable in that it gives other people here (users like you, and developers) a chance to comment, expand the discussion, correct misconceptions, and so on.  As I understand it, RIM tries to monitor these forums, and in the cases where they may not notice a particular concern, some of the long-time participants have back-channels to escalate serious concerns to their attention.  I'm pretty sure they watch the "big picture", and if enough people complain about something, I'm pretty sure they take notice and engage in internal discussions to decide what to do about it.  (My main problem with this whole process is that they almost never provide any external feedback to us, even to let us know they recognize certain problems.  For example, the PlayBook rapid charger quality problems... it's incontrovertibly a defect, but there's been no sign of any recognition of that on their part.)
That said, I sympathize with you.  I'm disgusted by that map vendor's products and behaviour, as I think they give the rest of us devs a bad name, not to mention "hogging" too much of the space in the Newest and Recently Updated lists, among other things.
I'll note one thing, however, though I don't like the idea I might actually be seen as defending them.  On the map quality topic, those maps are actually using the OpenStreetMap data, aren't they?  (Visit http://openstreetmap.org)  If so, the quality of the data isn't something that vendor has control over... OSM is basically just like Wikipedia, in that the content is almost entirely generated by volunteers, people like you and I, who have chosen to contribute.  (I've edited OSM for my own town, adding many missing roads, fixing spelling errors, etc.) 
If that's true, then I think the vendor ought to have made that very clear to their customers.  I'm not too surprised they did not, however, since I believe they knew they couldn't charge people $10 for a poor quality app that was merely giving you access to map data that cost the vendor nothing to provide.
Have you tried contacting the vendor and demanding a refund?  It is possible for developers to request that RIM arrange a refund, as I understand it.
Peter Hansen -- (BB10 and dev-related blog posts at http://peterhansen.ca.)
Author of White Noise and Battery Guru for BB10 and for PlayBook | Get more from your battery!