"My son has quit playing Pokemon GO"

#PokemonGO: TLDR: Kids accounts suck. Months ago made mistake of making a pokemon play account for my son. Tried to talk to support, tried to write CEO. Nothing. Son no longer wants to play, doesn't want to have to start from scratch again. RIP.​Here is what I tried to send to the CEO of Niantic:Dear John,I just want to say how much our family loves Pokemon Go. I've been playing consistently since last July last year when my son got me back into it. Once my wife got hooked it has turned into a great activity for us all to do together. It really adds a lot to our family and I just want to say thanks for that. It's more than just a game.I'm in the software industry myself running an online service so I cut you guys a lot of slack when it comes to problems with the service. You guys are very responsive to network problems (although I know some stuff is out of your hands) and it can be really hard to estimate what exactly the demand will look like for a given event. I empathize with the difficulty of "building the airplane while it is in flight" that happens with an online service. There are bumps along the way but you guys handle it.But let me get to why I'm writing. It's really on behalf of my son. He has a Pokemon Play kids account. And it really sucks. Pretty much every aspect of the game that has been introduced since the initial release has been hobbled, nerfed or made more difficult for my son. And as new features are added he can't use them. Within our family we call the kids account "Hard Mode" for pokemon go. For exampleFilling out your pokedex:No way to get regionals through trading.No way to get exclusives to 7k eggs.No way to get shinies unless he catches them.No way to get lucky pokemonLevel advancement: A great chunk of XP comes from ultra and best friend events. Level progress now that he's gotten to 33 has slowed to a crawl for him.Raids: Friend bonus damage means taking down raid bosses is harder. No friend bonus balls means that while my wife and I are getting 13-16 balls he is getting 9 or 10 of them. Making catching bosses much harder for him. It's gotten to the point where he really doesn't want to raid with us anymore.Badges: there are a number of badges that are just denied to him because he can't have friends.Items: Gifts can be a great source of more rare items like revives. As a result he doesn't have as good a stock of items as my wife and I.Social: We are at raids with other kids whose parents did not opt to get kids accounts for their kids and it's sort of sad to see him interact with them. They want to be friends in game and trade pokemon but he says that he has a kids account and they just look at him puzzled because they have no idea what that is. It's heartbreaking.And a few of the more recent features and how the affect my sonTrainer Battles: As sinnoh stones switched from 7 day research rewards to trainer battles he has much fewer chances to get a sinnoh stone.Lucky Friends: He can't take advantage of this at all. While I've gotten two so far my son will get none.So in summary my son can get a bit grumpy when we're doing the same activity in pokemon go and his experience is so much worse. He's still into community days because the experience is pretty much the same for him but he doesn't like raiding. There can be some inter family conflict because we want to do a nearby raid and he'd rather do something else.I noticed that Niantic Kids parents accounts have access to features that allow them to manage friend lists and social features. But no such feature exists for Pokemon Play. I had a thread with support asking for his Pokemon Play account to be transferred to Niantic Kids. While they were polite they gave me no avenues to get him into Niantic Kids short of starting over from scratch. My impression is that Pokemon Play is always going to be behind in terms of features from the rest of the system so I really regret creating his account through that avenue.A couple of solutions come to mind:Allow transfer of accounts from Pokemon Play to Niantic Kids. I heard through the grapevine that the backend for these accounts is pretty much the same system. But I really have no idea about the implementation so I might have gotten some bad info there.Buff kids accounts. Every aspect that is nerfed give kids accounts some extra benefit that a regular account doesn't have. More balls in raids, more chance to get sinnoh stones, way to get lucky pokemon, etc.While I think it is the worst option: a refund of all the money we've put into his account so if we start a new account from level 1 we don't lose the paid things we've put into his account. He's put a lot of sweat into his account and it would be pretty depressing for him to have to start over from 0.If you've made it this far thanks for reading. I hope something can be done for kids who play pokemon go because the experience is so much worse than with a regular account.Thanks,(names redacted:) via /r/pokemongo http://bit.ly/2PCZ0RX