I have read the promotional postings about the Bird in a Cage event, which finishes on Wednesday, and bought a Bird yesterday. The promotion suggests that you can go to the pet collector and exchange one you don't want for enough cash to buy a new one. You can't. When you sell your pet you get ONE Coin for it and a new pet costs TEN Coins. So, you would possibly have to spend the best part of FOUR THOUSAND DBCash on pets to sell, to accumulate ten Coins and then try to get the pet you want. This is far from clear from the wording of the promotion, which suggests an equal exchange, cash for pet. I had sold my pet to Lyrea, got one Coin, tried to buy a replacement pet; she told me I needed ten Coins. I was lucky, in that I sent a petition and got my pet replaced, because I thought there must be a misunderstanding and I should have given my pet, not sold it. I tried that but she repeatedly returned my pet. I sent another petition, explaining what had happened and the GM agreed with me that the wording was not clear and he refunded my DBCash, for which I was most grateful. This promotion needs to be reworded, so that it is crystal clear what is required, in the way of Cash especially. Better still, the buy-in price of an unwanted pet should equal the price of a replacement and the change should be made NOW, as the promotion ends on Wednesday. That way, a customer will know s/he can end up with the pet s/he wants.
I agree that the promotion wording isn't entirely clear, but I don't think it suggests a 1:1 exchange ratio either. I also agree that the 10:1 ratio is pretty poor, but 1:1 would defeat the purpose of making them random in the first place. The whole point of that is so people buy more (a lot more) than 10 (or whatever) to get a full collection. They don't expect people to go buy 10 birds with the intent of trading them in for 1 different pet. Lyrea's there so when people buy 100 birds to get the 10 they need, they can trade in the 90 they don't need. Basic "prize box" marketing, just a pretty awful implementation. Marketplace boxes should be a lot cheaper, like 25 or 50 DBC, and the full collection reward should be something better than a silly title. Should get a special pet only available from the collection reward, like they did with the Doll and Denizen boxes a while back.
