The rules we work within
Every ban sits inside a set of rules: the platform’s terms, the law where you live, and what each regulator and dispute body can order. These are the twenty that shape every case, and what stays open inside each one.
Intake first. Payment after. Not taken on = refunded.
Knowing which routes are open is most of the work. The fastest way to lose a ban appeal is to spend three weeks on a route that was never open, so every case we run starts from the rules below.
One thing this page will never say. It will never tell you that you are out of options. Every rule here is followed by what is still open, because across every set of dating-app terms, regulator decision and consumer statute we have read, every banned account has had a route left to run.
Four lines we never cross
1. Reinstatement is the platform’s decision. The decision belongs to the platform. No regulator can order a dating app to give a specific account back, and the EU's certified dispute bodies cannot either: Article 21(2) of the Digital Services Act says they "shall not have the power to impose a binding settlement". A court, or an arbitrator under the app's terms, could in principle order it (Tinder's terms let an arbitrator award "injunctive or declaratory relief" to the individual), but we have found no published dating-app case where one did. Any service quoting you a success rate on your own case, or selling a "guaranteed unban", is selling something it does not control. What stays open: what we guarantee is the work. Every route that applies to your case, drafted properly, and the first filing sent within 48 hours of us having everything we need to file, or you can ask for the fee back; the filing goes out anyway, and taking the refund ends the engagement.
2. We never log into your account. Nobody here asks for your password and nobody here would accept it. Tinder, Hinge, Bumble and every other app in our list ban account sharing in their terms, so a shared login converts a ban that might have been a mistake into one the platform can fully justify. It is the one mistake nothing else on this page can undo. What stays open: for the three places that require your own login - Tinder's Appeals Center, Hinge's in-app button, Grindr's assistant - we write the words, then stay on the line while you paste them in yourself.
3. Every word we file is true. If you were selling something, if you were running two profiles, if you did say the thing that was reported, we will not draft a denial of it. Partly because we would be putting our name on a lie, and mostly because it does not work: the moderation team has the log and you do not. What stays open: an appeal that names the conduct, explains the context and shows what has changed gives the reviewer something to reverse. A flat denial asks them to disbelieve the log in front of them.
4. No bluffs and no pretend lawyers. No invented lawsuits, no fake regulator complaints, no letters implying we are lawyers. We are not a law firm, we do not give legal advice, and we do not represent anyone in court. What stays open: the real filings, sent for real. A Digital Services Act Article 21 referral to a certified body, a data protection authority complaint, a state Attorney General consumer complaint, a small claims filing about money. Those carry weight precisely because they are genuine, and a bluff spends the credibility a genuine filing needs. Whether a real claim against Tinder is worth bringing is on can I sue Tinder for banning me.
We work out which routes are actually open to you, write the appeal where the app gives you a box for one, and file the routes outside the app in your name, the first inside 48 hours. We never ask for your password. Intake first, payment after.
Get my case built - $149What the law can and cannot compel
5. No law forces an app to answer an appeal. No law in any jurisdiction we have checked obliges a private platform to answer an appeal, or to answer it within any particular time. The Digital Services Act requires the large platforms to run an internal complaints system and to give reasons, and the UK's Online Safety Act requires complaints procedures, but neither gives one person a way to compel an answer to their own case. What stays open: silence is itself a fact you can file. An unanswered appeal is what makes an Article 21 referral, a regulator complaint or a refund claim land, because the platform's own record now shows it did not engage.
6. Regulators order disclosure, not reinstatement. It is an easy thing to assume, and an expensive one. A data protection authority can order disclosure of what a company holds on you and correction of what is wrong. Ofcom can fine a platform for systemic failures in its complaints handling. An Attorney General can act on unfair or deceptive practices. None of them adjudicates your individual account. What stays open: the disclosure itself is often the win. The Irish Data Protection Commission has published exactly two dating-app case studies, both Tinder, and both began as erasure requests: in one Tinder offered to delete the man's data at once rather than keep it for its usual retention period, in the other it re-reviewed a ban and lifted it. Neither began as an appeal. In our case study, a data access request ended with Tinder lifting the ban, with no regulator involved.
7. A completed deletion cannot be reversed. Once the platform has carried out a deletion you asked for, whether by erasure request or by tapping delete account, the account you would be asking it to restore no longer exists. A request that has not been carried out yet is different: in one Irish regulator case, a banned Tinder user asked for erasure, and after the regulator took up the complaint, Tinder re-reviewed the ban and lifted it. This is why we ask about it in the first two questions of the free check and why we will tell you to stop before you do it. What stays open: a money claim survives deletion. So does a complaint about how the ban was decided, and so does the record of it.
8. A closed account takes its matches and messages with it. Once an account is closed, the conversations are gone from your side and no route restores them. An access request can sometimes produce a copy of what the company still holds, which is not the same as having your inbox back. What stays open: if you have not been banned yet but think it is coming, download your data export now. It is free, it takes minutes, and it is the single most useful thing anyone reading this page can do today.
9. Device and number blocks follow the account decision. When a platform blocks the hardware or the number rather than the account, no appeal form addresses it, because there is no account attached to appeal about. Nothing sold as a device reset, a hardware spoof or an IMEI change is something we will touch: those are ban-evasion tools, they break the terms outright, and they convert a recoverable situation into a permanent one. What stays open: get the underlying account decision reversed and the device block is normally lifted with it, because it was applied as an enforcement of that decision. That makes the account appeal the route to the device, not a detour from it.
10. A reinstated account carries its history. What stays open: the reinstatement letter usually tells you what tripped it, and that is the thing to change. We put it in plain words at the end of every case.
11. The odds that exist are the platforms’ own. 21.2% of account-ban appeals reversed at Tinder, 36.1% of appeals at Hinge, about 32% across Match Group's EU brands in 2025, all from their own transparency reports. What stays open: the free check scores how appealable your situation is, which is a different and answerable question: how many routes are open, how much time is left on each, and whether the facts support them.
Where a rule asks for you personally
A few steps have to come from you in person. In each one we prepare everything and you send it, and every other route runs as normal.
12. Coffee Meets Bagel will not read an appeal sent by anyone but you. Of the twenty four dating apps whose terms we have read line by line, CMB is the only one that says this in writing. What stays open: we draft it, you send it from your own address, and everything after the appeal - the money routes, the regulator complaints, the access request - is unaffected. CMB is not a Match Group brand, so the Match Group escalation desk does not cover it either.
13. Only you can answer an identity check. A paid company can send a European data access request in your name. The European Data Protection Board's guidelines on the right of access (01/2022, paragraph 80) say "it is possible for a third party to make a request on behalf of the data subject", including "acting through a proxy", and that the company may check the authorisation where that is proportionate. The not-for-profit rule people quote, Article 80 of the GDPR, is about bodies bringing complaints and court actions for someone, not access requests. What only you can do is answer the platform's identity check. What stays open: we send the request in your name, with your authority for us to act stated in it, and you answer the identity question when it comes. Europe's Article 21 referee also accepts a representative: Platform Control's own rules expressly permit one.
14. The EU dispute bodies need a link to the EU. Article 21 of the Digital Services Act creates certified out-of-court dispute settlement bodies, and they are the strongest route that exists for a dating-app ban. Platform Control, ADR Point and ADR Center between them cover Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, Bumble and Badoo. Each body sets its own test. Platform Control’s rules, for example, ask you to declare that you are an EU or EEA citizen, and say living in the EU always counts. When we file this route for you, our Terms need you to be in the EU or the EEA. Appeals Centre Europe declines dating apps outright. What stays open: if you are outside Europe and hold neither link, this is why our country pages exist. The UK, the United States, Canada, Australia, Brazil and India each have a different strongest route, and it is never the same one.
15. India's new data access right is not in force yet. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act's access right does not commence until 13 May 2027. We will not sell you a request that has no law behind it yet. What stays open: the IT Rules 2021 already give you a named Grievance Officer, an acknowledgement within 24 hours and an answer within 15 days, and that is live today. It is on the India page in full.
16. A small claim is filed in your own name. Small claims courts are built for litigants in person and most bar paid non-lawyer representation. What stays open: the entire preparation. Which court, which corporate entity to name and at which registered address, what the filing fee is, what the claim is worth and what the company's arbitration clause does to it. The filing itself is a form and a fee, and people win these. Whether a claim against Tinder is worth it is on can I sue Tinder for banning me.
Cases we decline, and refund in full
There are two, and only two. Everything else is something we work with. We turn these down before taking money where we can see it at intake, and when one surfaces after payment you are refunded in full and told exactly why.
17. Anything involving a minor. If the account was under 18, or if the ban relates to contact with someone under 18, we decline and we do not refer you elsewhere.
18. Bans following real harm. Credible reports of violence, coercion, stalking or non-consensual images. We are not the right people and there is no version of this we take money for.
The case check is free and takes two minutes. It tells you which routes are open on your ban, including the cases where it tells you not to pay anyone.
Two we work with, rather than decline
Both of these get treated as declines by other services. Neither is one here. They change how the case is argued, not whether we take it.
19. A second account already running. Most people do this. You get banned, you make another profile, and by the time you look for help there are two accounts in the picture. We do not turn you away for it, but you do have to tell us, because it changes the argument: the platform can point at the replacement, so the appeal has to deal with it head on instead of hoping nobody notices. What we do: close the second account, then say so plainly and early in the appeal. Volunteered, it is a fact we can explain. Discovered by them later, it hands the reviewer a reason to stop reading. The same case runs either way. What changes is how much work the appeal has to do, and it is a lot more.
20. Cases the free guide covers. If you were banned last week, you have a notice naming the reason, and the app's own form is still open, the guide has the wording for that appeal. People bring these to us anyway, because they get one submission and want it written by people who have read the platform's terms and its transparency report, and because everything after the appeal, from the access request to the regulator, runs on deadlines we track and chase. We take those cases in full. What stays open: the guide, in full, at no cost.
A rule on one route is not a limit on your case. Most of what is above closes one path and leaves the others open. Only two of the twenty are cases we turn away, and the only closed door is a deletion you asked for, which still leaves the money and the record intact.
If anyone tells you there is nothing you can do, they have stopped looking. Run the free check and find out what is actually still open on yours.
Questions people ask about the rules
No. The decision to reinstate an account belongs to the platform. No regulator can order a dating app to restore a specific account, and the EU's certified dispute bodies have no power to impose a binding settlement. A court or an arbitrator could in principle, but we have found no published dating-app case where one did. A company advertising a guaranteed unban is promising an outcome it does not control, so ask what the guarantee pays out on. What we promise is the work: the routes that apply, drafted properly and filed on time.
No. A data protection authority can order a company to disclose the data it holds on you and to correct what is inaccurate. Ofcom can act on systemic failures in a platform's complaints handling. A state Attorney General can act on unfair or deceptive practices. None of them decides an individual account. The value of a regulator route is the disclosure and the pressure, and in both published Irish dating-app cases the account outcome followed the data case rather than an appeal.
Not once the deletion has been carried out: that is the one genuinely closed door, because the account you would be asking the company to restore no longer exists. An erasure request that has not been actioned yet is different, and in one Irish regulator case, after the regulator took up the complaint, Tinder re-reviewed the ban and lifted it. A claim about money you paid still survives, and so does a complaint about how the ban was decided. If you are banned and considering deleting, do not: a deleted account is one no route can bring back.
It breaks the terms of every app we have read, and it is the single most reliable way to turn a reversible ban into a permanent one. It also weakens every legitimate route at the same time, because the platform can point at the second account. Device and phone-number blocks are normally applied as enforcement of the account decision, so reversing the account decision is what lifts them. That makes the appeal the route to the device, not a detour around it.
Possibly, if you are an EU or EEA citizen. Platform Control’s rules accept citizenship as a link to the EU and say living in the EU always counts; ADR Center and ADR Point set their own tests. When we file this route for you, our Terms need you to be in the EU or the EEA. Platform Control, ADR Point and ADR Center between them cover Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, Bumble and Badoo, and Appeals Centre Europe declines dating apps outright. If you hold neither link, the strongest route differs by country: a data access and correction request in Australia, consumer guarantees in the UK, state consumer statutes and small claims in the United States, and a named Grievance Officer with a 15-day deadline in India.
Two. Anything involving a minor, and bans following credible reports of violence, coercion, stalking or non-consensual images. That is the whole list. Two things often treated as declines elsewhere are not declines here: a second account already running is something we work with once it is closed and disclosed, and a case the free guide covers is one we take on in full. A declined case is refunded in full and told why.
No. Across twenty four apps and every jurisdiction we have country pages for, every banned account has had a route left to run. Some cases rest on one route rather than six, and the free check shows which. The sentence "there is nothing you can do" is almost always someone having stopped looking, and it is not a sentence you will read on this site.
Where to go from here
If something on this page describes your case, the next step is usually free. The free check asks fourteen questions and tells you which routes are open and how long is left on each, without a card. The guide publishes every route in full. The comparison sets our tiers against doing it alone.
Everything we run for you is on how it works, and the prices are on one page with no tier hidden behind a call.