My frustrations with Seller Office, commercial seller status and 1:1 support from Samsung

Galaxy Store Seller Portal
1

Hi. I want to post this partly to rant, but I also hope to get some help or advice.

I started playing around with GearWatchDesigner about two years ago, and created my “Command Line Watchface” which became “popular” very quickly - and has just under 190,000 downloads today. This really sparked my interest in development specifically for Gear and Galaxy Watches. Ever since then, I’ve tried to get my commercial seller status since I had many more faces I worked on, and wanted to have that door open if I one day decided my faces were worth something more than “free”.

I have been trying periodically for the past two years to submit all the proper documents and details to get my commercial seller status, and always get rejected - almost always without an email notification or a reason. After some 1:1 “enquiries” and emails with Seller Office support, I finally got my answer. The issue was that my ID card is from country A, but I reside in country B. I was told to provide proof of residence and proof of student status for country B. There isn’t even a field to provide those when filling out the application!

I provided a “permission to reside” and a photo of my student ID, both of which I wasn’t even comfortable to share with Samsung. After getting several more requests denied, each with various modifications.

They later also told me that
“Previous submissions (in Sep, Nov) were rejected, due to the image quality (unclear)” - I had to compress the images to make them fit in the tiny 5mb or so allowed upload, but they were still easily readable and fully legible!
“Last submission was rejected by proof of residence (Needs to be the statement/letter issued from bank or public institution)” - I have my legal document that proves to every legal body in Norway that I am living here legally. If it is good enough for literally every institution, state agency, or whatever, why isn’t it good enough for Samsung to let me sell some stupid faces for $0.50??

I can’t even provide my address in Country A as my address when filling out the form. The country picker is greyed out.

This is so insulting and frustrating. The system seems so broken, and the support staff seem so unwilling to help or even slightly nudge me in the right direction. I really can’t believe how infuriatingly difficult they have made this seemingly simple thing to be.

Is there anything I can do, or do I just put all my eggs in the Apple/App Store basket?

(Wanted to add that the first issue was actually my age, but I didn’t find that out until after several emails and inquiries, over several months. I have since turned 18 and requested a commercial status several more times, and had the same issues.)

2

I understand your frustration with getting a commercial license for the seller store. The request needs to be exact match to the ID and the ID must be internationally acceptable. I even had my request rejected because I didn’t include my middle name which is on my ID. For legal reasons it is very exacting.

I suggest you read the Commercial Seller Request Private section of the guide and if there are any questions post them here where others may help before you resubmit your request. There may be issues with translations that we can help with. But, you must go through Samsung Seller Portal 1:1 Enquiry first and foremost as there may be private matters that can’t be posted publicly.

Ron
Samsung Developer Program

3

I have some answers for you the seller portal was very attentive to your message.

You have uncovered some system issues and they will be looked at.

  1. [System] Proof of residence and proof of student status but
    ==> No field to provide information
    They will try to address this.

  2. [System]Compress the images to make them fit in the tiny 5mb
    ==> 5MB is small to attach clear image
    They will look into this to see if the file size can be larger.
    I think if you scan a document and don’t take a picture of it the file would be much smaller

  3. [System] When filling out the form. The country picker is greyed out.
    ==> System malfunction
    This is a bug

  4. [Process] Was rejected by proof of residence (Needs to be the statement/letter issued from bank or public institution)”
    - I have my legal document that proves to every legal body in Norway

Unfortunately there are few internationally accepted proof of residence for financial reasons and you did not seem to provide it.
Read https://seller.samsungapps.com/guide.as?subGuideId=1005502002&guidePageId=1005501001&dtCode=code01&localeLanguage=en

My advice is use PayPal and not a bank.

Now the bad news. Getting a commercial seller account does not ensure you can sell Watch Faces you had to submit a form to the seller portal in May to do that. I do not believe you have done that. If you did and I just missed it in the list, you are good to go. But if not you will have to wait until August to request to be a watch face seller partner.

Sorry to tell you there are more hoops to walk through. But I do thank you for pointing out some flaws in the system.

Ron
Samsung Developer Program.