Does anyone know if the Google Play Store requiring a phone number for business registrations is a hard and fast rule? Is there a way of hiding the phone number that you provide from the company’s Play Store listing?
I ask because my tiny company has never had a phone number. We’ve been able to provide excellent customer support via other channels and working out how to fit a phone number into our customer support system would be a real headache.
Looking at other Google Play Store listings, some popular apps don’t list a phone number, so I presume that either there’s a way of not showing it or they’re registering as an individual instead of as a company?
Contact phone number and email address that Google uses to contact you about your developer account. These are NOT shown to users on Google Play
In addition to the contact details and developer contact information that Google Play collects, we also ask for your organization’s phone number. This should be the phone number that a user might be expected to find when looking up your organization on the web or a public registry, like Dun and Bradstreet, and therefore might be different to the contact information that you set up for your Google Play developer account. This is used to verify your developer identity details.
Thanks, Sascha! The signup process made it look like the “Organisation phone number” would be published as a technical support phone number and is required for organisation accounts. Hopefully I’m worrying about nothing.
Oh yes indeed. The process of Windows code signing demands a phone number on your website.
It’s an utter pain. We’ve had to hide it.
As a UK company, when we openly published phone numbers (before y 2000), American customers would have a query at 10pm, and just ring.
Which meant a 3am phone call to a house with a young kid
Who phones anyone these days? Even the big guys - every call to a bank or shop, or agency - its amazing how anytime, day or night, weekday or weekend - its always ‘a busy time right now’
Caution! Because Google also writes that this data is occasionally verified and publications are no longer possible if such verification fails.
Quote:
We may occasionally check if your account is active by emailing or calling the account owner using the details you provided, so it is important that these details are accurate.