AutumnElf wrote:
Whether people have noticed or not, there ARE adoption guilds, who pride in "prettying" up poor neopets from the pound, and adopting them out to others. Great, you feel good at having snagged a pretty pet from the pound...chances are, the previous owner of that pet had found a trustworthy person to take care of that pet. I'm not implying that any of you aren't trustworthy, but does the previous owner feel happy the transfer was not sucessful? Does the person who was supposed to adopt the neopet feel happy? Not really. I know this is true because I've had my experiences before, too.
Whether you agree with me or not, it doesn't really matter. I just wanted to say what I think is right, whether you think it's right or not.
I certainly think that if you intercept a transfer you should pass the pet on to the intended owner. (Assuming, of course, that the pet's former owner can provide some sort of evidence that they are indeed the pet's former owner and not just another pound-surfer who missed the pet themselves.)
But so far my experience has been that unless you have a pet of a VERY desirable color -- Darigan, Maraquan, Grey -- adopting them out is actually not all that easy. I think a lot of people eventually simply pound pets with good-but-not-super-expensive paint jobs to free up space on their lab accounts for new pets to zap.
So I don't think it's the case that most of the painted pets in the pound are actually transfers. Sure, some are, but I think there are quite a few genuinely abandoned pets as well.
:shrug: Of course, I've mostly been trying to place pets via Neocolours... maybe if I tried a larger forum like this one, or an adoption guild, I'd have better luck.