This is sadly extremely true. I am not pointing fingers or trying to play the blame game. But the truth of the matter is that the community has zero faith in the appeals process largely because of the quote shared above.
I mean it's sort of absurd to argue your point to someone and have them reject it. Only to turn around shortly/immediately after and have the same discussion with the exact same person and expect the outcome to be different for some reason.
And yes you can appeal for a senior admin. I have one open currently since the beginning of November. I'm sure the reasons for it being archived and forgotten about are innocent enough. But things like this stack up and eventually the player base just doesn't trust it anymore.