They bully small developers, because big companies like Uber or Grab have the same functionality with zero problems. While when we try to explain that we use phone number for the same reason, Apple insists that we change how our app looks and works.
Considering 40% of all submissions in the past week (shown on Apple's website) get rejected, it's entirely possible they were rejected using phone number input and after explaining to Apple their purpose, they were finally accepted. You're bound to get 1 or 2 apps erroneously rejected considering they go through 100k submissions every week.
It also says the app store team takes 1000 calls every week to discuss the rejections. It's not just you or small devs.
Speaking of Epic, maybe you're right and it's not just small developers.