Misleading offer – Santa’s Challenge Mystery Offer

This is not a bug but it is an issue.
Consumer protection is vital in all business. International internet businesses have to meet the consumer protection laws in every nation that it is offered.
In Australia laws regarding advertising of special offers are explicit in that they must not mislead.
My reading of the current calendar offer misled me.
It says “Buy to unlock offer”
It does not say “Buy all to unlock offer”
Out of curiosity, I bought the first day and was disappointed not to find an offer as suggested. Foolishly I bought further tickets to see what happened. In my alliance I was told to check the shop. I did but found nothing.
Rechecking the calendar I found nothing to indicate that all five purchases were necessary.
A late Xmas gift gave me enough money to buy the remaining tickets and the offer activated.
I do not know if my wages will come in time to buy it. As a time limited special it feels harsh. As a low income earner I get used to missing out on things like this. I am not used to been led to think that buying a ticket will give me access to a better offer then finding out I have to but a suite of tickets to get it.
Consumer protection in advertising is taken very seriously in Australia and the wording of advertised specials of the Buy one get discount type has to be explicit in its wording.
It’s hard given the sheer amount of different legislatures but that is not an excuse.
Small Games + Zynga is a global
business and must comply with all relevant laws.
Australia is not the only country with such consumer proteactions which makes me wonder how the EU would consider such clumsy wording.

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Was a complaint last year

Don’t think any law suits happened though considering the total for the offer is like 10 bucks which is greatly lower cost than a lawyer and all the days off work to deal with court

But agreed they should say all.

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It’s no-brainer actually. Besides, I don’t see any issue in buying those 5 small offers (identical with event offers); they are the best gem deal in the game.

Depends if you only had 1.99 in your gplay account and was curious if the mystery offer was good enough to put on pants and go to the store to refill but then you’re disappointed to find out your 1.99 wasn’t enough to solve the mystery…i can understand the annoyance

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Meh, it’s a semantics argument.

There are more important things to argue about like why I cant pull guin for the life of me.

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Because you haven’t hit the $20k mark yet

Keep spending, you’ll get there lol

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There are threads in here that track this information. Instead of using your $$ to figure out the mystery it would have benefited you more to come to the forums to find the answer. That’s exactly what I did to determine if I wanted to buy the offer. The information was here on the first day.

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If you read the full post, you’ll see that the OP did not have enough funds for the mystery offer after buying all five of the initial offers. They might not have proceeded with buying all/any of the five if it was 100% clear that was the catch.

As for being a no-brainer, that is a bit harsh I think. I had to take a moment to deduce it probably means “buy all”, and I can assure you I’m no simpleton (most of the time anyway!) Who knows, it might have been each of the five offers had their own mystery offer (even though technically I can’t see how that could be implemented)… :man_shrugging:

All that being said, given OP knows of this forum, one could say it would have been worth a check here first to find out what the offer entailed, if there was any doubt (like I did, both to be sure and to know what this “mystery offer” was haha!) But not everyone will know of this forum.

And what if it was a more expensive offer? Yeah, people need to be careful with any purchase, but these days there are reams of legislation for sellers to follow too, as they need their sneekiness kept in check hehe.

Interesting question, was there any :information_source: thingy on the offer that explained how it worked? Already bought myself so can’t check.

EDIT: ahh I can see screenshot in OP doesn’t show any :information_source: button. Heh… that’s all it would’ve taken, SGG.

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This is true, but not all are on the forum or even following the game on another platform.

It is the same ad from last year so I don’t expect it to change. As @Rigs said, I too recall complaints last year.

To OP, sorry if you felt misled. While I personally am okay with what it says, I understand where you are coming from. What’s probably most frustrating though is that there is a simple solution:

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Buy 5 and then a special bonus will appear…

I tried and then i’m shocked… i must pay again for 700 gems, 1 hero token and 1 troop token…

This is no special… this feels misleading the consumer… (so i felt it)

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Nobody forces you to buy it… It is a bonus because is 300% deal. The same cost in shop is for 400 gems. And this offer contains 1200 gems (after transforming tokens in gems). This is the bonus. Savvy? :slight_smile:

It says “Buy to Unlock Mystery Offer” but it should say “Buy FIVE to Unlock Mystery Offer.” I think it’s misleading.

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Very true. I was speaking directly to the OP and not considering s/he was trying to represent others.

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Such noise for nothing… First of all, you don’t need to have a forum account in order to read it. Anyone who has a little brain and fingers could search or ask for something, if isn’t sure. Asking the alliance teammates is always the first step. For anything, not only because you’re confused about an offer. The second step is to search on forum and you don’t need an account for this. And I am still confused why me and other many players understood since start is about buying the entire stock. What is so hard to deduct? :man_facepalming: :man_facepalming: :man_facepalming:

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I bough the offer I do actually think it was written in red buy all 5 to unlock offer!
If you look in the screen shot they have bought 4 already leaving 1 to unlock the offer.
Any free to play players must be able to take a screen shot of the offer at the start to clearly state what it says!? :woman_shrugging:

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Jesus lol

Did you run out of coffee today?

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Think maybe they thought color matching the letters and the #5 were enough

But yea could have made it more obvious

My suggestion would be a giant pop up with flashing lights in the biggest screen manageable font screaming “BUY ALL 5 FOR MYSTERY OFFER”

But I’m not in marketing of any kind so what do i know

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Maybe not, but if you’ve spent the night at a holiday inn. :joy::rofl::joy::rofl:

Sorry. Couldn’t resist. Carry on.

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Always down for a party at the holiday inn…