question

>both times it has stated that I don't validate the signature for incoming requests, That's a weird one. I haven't seen that. I'm not sure what you can do there. >so isn't it the pot calling the kettle black in this case when Amazon is breaking their own rules/guidelines? What you quotes was not a skill. It was an intrinsic feature to the Echo. They play by different rules. The rules for skills, to some degree, ensure that if Amazon wants to develop an intrinsic feature in competition it can. For example, I have a Knock-Knock joke skill. It is much harder to use than the intrinsic knock-knock joke feature. There is nothing I can do about that, because 3rd parties have to live within those limitations. >I challenged some of the feedback, yet never heard anything back. I do not think I have ever, ever, ever heard anything back from anything challenged. They do not appear to read what you write back. They do not appear to read the submission notes. >I think the submission guidelines are a bit flawed I think the submission process is completely broken because 1) Several submission requirements are subjective 2) You get a different person each time you submit for certification 3) There is no means of having a dialog with the person certifying Put these three together and you get, from a user perspective, random results. I submitted the same skill three times in a row, and got three different feedback comments. I'll be tabulating these together sometime this will and will post the results. Based on that my company will decide if it is possible to continue to attempt to do business with a system that appears to be random. >want to ensure only good apps get through, I do not believe this is the goal of the certification process. I used to review every single skill enabled for Alexa. There are too many now so I don't. I was going to only review the good ones. There aren't many good ones anymore. The more interesting your application, the more things the certifiers can find wrong with it. Since it is different each time you submit, the only skills with a chance of passing through are the ones that are so simple there is very little to comment on. Mostly "fortune cookie" skills. The current certification process results in stifling innovation. >Appreciate any further feedback Amazon might be able to offer on this. Good luck with that. If you note, the Amazon staff who reply in the forum are not the people who certify skills. The same names appear in all of the "Amazon Mobile App" forums. The work all the areas and only say they will pass on the comments to "relevant teams". The only communication back is when new features are released, or not released. There is no dialog. The closest I've seen to getting into more than a two exchange dialog with an Amazon staff (other than simple support matters) has been by ranting. So, by all means, rant away. It's the most successful strategy so far. >_<

Hi Justin, We apologize for any of the frustrations you've been facing with the certification process. If you could please send a contact-us addressed to me (Justin) with your skill's app-id, and I can help find clarifications in your issues and establish additional dialog. Thanks, Justin https://developer.amazon.com/appsandservices/support/contact/contact-us