I do not have a problem with the promotion.
...if people give totem lots of money that isn't totem's fault.
I agree with
@orclover on these two points. Totem is free to offer whatever promotions they like. Yes, as customers, we are free to *****, but there's absolutely no feedback that's as loud as simply not participating in offers that we don't like.
Totem is not stupid or evil, but like most businesses they experiment with "elasticity of demand". That's the economic principle to describe how the price of a highly desired item can be increased without losing a significant number of buyers and/or profit. However, at some point, an increase does cause a significant loss, so businesses roll back to the previous price and consider that an appropriate price based on current demand. In this case, Totem is testing to see whether customers will pre-pay for a month of cards with no discount and only the special event card as an incentive. It sounds like a lot of us posting in this thread won't, but if enough people do buy it, then there's no reason that Totem shouldn't continue to offer promotions like this. I might not like missing out on The Black Fox card, but that's the way the free market works.
(It's really too bad that stoicism isn't a sport because I would seriously kick ass ...
😐)