Never occurred to me to try that, because I assumed I would get banned for doing it, until today.

Nah, as long as you aren’t demanding and rude, you’ll either get a reply or not, and if you get a reply, it’ll either be “we’ll look into it”, “we looked into it and acted in some way”, or “we looked into it and decided it isn’t actionable”; often with some supporting explanation.

(I suppose if you open with e.g. “wtf is wrong with you mods” they might well ask you to reconsider your approach or else clock a ban — I’ve never tried that!)