BC Ferries

In normal circumstances the term reservation means you have a guaranteed spot on the plane, train or automobile. BC Ferries calls their Reserved Boarding Ticket a Guaranteed Travel Option on their Fare Info Page. But instead of rewarding a person for planning ahead and offering a ticket for less, BC Ferries charges a per diem for the privileged of arriving on time. This is not a reservation. Call it a “I don’t want to show up early tax”, “I’m richer than you and get more options surcharge” or call it anything but it’s not a reservation. Especially now that the fine print was activated this holiday weekend and people with Reserved Boarding tickets found themselves with the – ah-hum – rest of the unreserved riff-raff, the truth about BC Ferries’ reservations comes out.

If BC Ferries thought to do it right and correct, they would find it easier to run their entire system.

1 Reward people for thinking ahead and charge them less for reserving because then…

2 more people will think ahead and…

3 The entire system will have a better idea of how many are travelling on any given day

Whatever BC Ferries is doing now, it’s not a reservation and if any other private company advertised like that, there would be hell to pay.

a. Scan your computers for viruses / malware, especially if unauthorized tweets continue to be posted in your accounts even after you’ve changed the password.

b. Use a password that you don’t use anywhere else and never use the former password on a compromised account. Create a new and difficult password unique to Twitter that consists of both letters and numbers

c. Check the Connections page at http://twitter.com/account/connections and revoke the access privileges of any third party applications that you do not recognize.

d. Avoid providing your username and/or e-mail and password to untrusted third-party sites. (Many are phishing sites offering more followers)

e. Remove any updates that you did not post personally; leaving these updates can result in your account being re-suspended.

I want to add the risk involved adding third part sites to your Twitter account. Many of these sites promise more followers. Any account that asks for your password is probably phishing.

Here is a link to the Wikipedia.org article on it.

Have a great weekend!

I sent an email to their appeals email address. It’s been about 18 hours and I have not heard a thing.

I don’t use Facebook for much but I use it a lot. Everything I connect to online feeds into my facebook account. This blog for instance, my meetup groups, twitter: it all feeds Facebook and there many friends commenting on what I’m doing. I seem to be using Facebook for it’s intended purpose of social networking so why this sudden death of my account without warning?

It makes me look at a lot of social networking companies with a lot of suspicion. What if I built up a business network of customers and associates on Twitter to find it all gone one day?

For now I have this blog. Even though the design isn’t finished I’m going to have to use it to keep those who care updated.

It’s been my experience that the average person has little understanding of who their domain registrar actually is and how it all works and I am guessing that this is what The DRoC people are hoping for.
As a domain name registrar reseller myself receiving this notice stood out to me like a red flag. They are using the word “renewal” as if this is coming from YOUR current domain registrar but what they are really trying to do is TRANSFER your domain name to their services.

Normally, a succesful transfer relies on the person clicking “yes” in a confirmation email from the current registrar but what the fine print on the back of these DRoC mail-outs say is that in the event a transfer doesn’t take place they will keep trying daily until it becomes available for transfer. Not only that but “You agree to pay prior to the effectiveness of the desired services.” In otherwards, if your transfer to them fails, you still pay.
I don’t know of any domain registrar who does that except for DRoC.