  Cosmological models involving an interaction between dark matter and dark
energy have been proposed in order to solve the so-called coincidence problem.
Different forms of coupling have been studied, but there have been claims that
observational data seem to narrow (some of) them down to something annoyingly
close to the $\Lambda$CDM model, thus greatly reducing their ability to deal
with the problem in the first place. The smallness problem of the initial
energy density of dark energy has also been a target of cosmological models in
recent years. Making use of a moderately general coupling scheme, this paper
aims to unite these different approaches and shed some light as to whether this
class of models has any true perspective in suppressing the aforementioned
issues that plague our current understanding of the universe, in a quantitative
and unambiguous way.
