Hi everyone,
Thank you very much for your support. If anyone has any ideas on how to solve this issue, they would be greatly appreciated. Contacting Niantic proved to be useless and i am unable to change app permissions on my device without root.
In the meantime, I've deleted the game and downloaded Ingress :( :(
-NickStuf
Very sorry to hear that. Niantic is swamped right now, as you can imagine. I don't think they were prepared, in multiple ways, for the kind of response Pokemon Go has had. One of those is customer service.
Once things cool down a bit and now that they have it rolled out in every planned country (Japan being the final country, today, I believe) perhaps there will be more bug fixes and communication soon. Hopefully in a few weeks you'll be able to move forward and join the fun.