Here is what I would add as well. There needs to be a basic set of ethics and good manners that should not be waived just because you are “talking” online.

The post you refer to makes some comparisons to the physical world situations, i.e. equating “Blog” link to “Food” sign in a restaurant. I would then also make a real-life analogy: if you owned a clothing store and one of the sought-after clients decided to buy her next dress from a competitor; would you go about talking loudly how poor of a choice she made and how the dress lacks taste? (even if that would coerce them into consulting with you on the fashion choices in the future)

Another thing: the website criticism appears to be logical and structured. But is it? If you were to go to 2 other usability experts, would they come back with the same list of issues? I bet not. Most of the remarks can certainly be contested and are highly subjective. If you agree, then it’s simply an “opinion” post, and since it’s coming from a player in the industry, it’s also a marketing post. All of which are fine, as long as you don’t do that at the expense of others.

It still boggles my mind how often people would post mocking reviews of others’ work: “worst real estate video”, “worst real estate ad”, etc. And even worse, those post will get a whole bunch of knee-slapping laughter in comments (high-school analogy?) In many cases, these are results of people trying their hand at new things; and yes often they are bad; but would you go about talking loudly about someone’s first crack at home decorating that didn’t go well. Best though is when afterwards the mocker gets called on their post by someone who can actually defend themselves online and you can see the mocker squirm; all of this smells of bullying and high-school.

Most of us are competing to make a living; but some respect and decency go a long way.

It’s starting to become evident we are not alone. We only purchased this pass for emergency situations, too, and consequently had 6 tickets left when it expired. Our usage was pretty evident to BCF.

So instead of paying double fare for an assured loading, we obviously have paid 5x for each of the four trips. All we were hoping to have from BCF was the opportunity to transfer the balance to another BCF item as we have no other choice for ferries, but such is not the case.

BCF could also have put a time limit on the tickets debiting at an initial rate for two years, then moving to an indexed rate thereafter. It would reduce the number of tickets if the consumer didn’t use up the balance by the end of two years, but the consumer would continue to have the ability to get an assured loading pass, and BCF would have the money in their account.