Thanks for your contributions to this topic, I have got a refund for £47.97 off Apple as a result of what you kind posters have submitted here.
My own personal experiance has been awful, my young daughter started playing the game when it came out in the UK. After the first update she reinstalled the game and found her account had been totally wiped and she had to start over from the very beginning, this 1 day after she spent £14.99 on coins for the game. I wrote to Niantic and was ignored. When she found out she was level one again she was in tears. Not great for a Dad to have that phone call in work with your child having no idea what's happened to her Pokemon!
I promised her I'd start the game again with her, and drive her round in the car in the afternoons after work so she could visit the pokestops. Several days ago her account was banned and 2 days later mine was banned. I went through the procedure of appealing with no response, still not sure what we did wrong either, I can't see what rules we may of fallen foul of.
My daughter is upset again as she now has to start over for the third time in a few weeks. I've actually gone the other way with it now, I'm not spending anymore money on the game, but I have bought a Bot to get us back to the level we were. Before they banned us for no reason. I had no idea what a bot even was but I'm learning fast.
Either way the glove are off with regards to Niantic now, stuff them to be honest. As I said above thanks for the information, at least I recovered the money that they stole off my daughter.