As some of you may remember, I'm one of the more outspoken advocates of never
charging for your services, yet I suggested to a player that they set up a
business running people from Freeport to Qeynos for 2 plat a pop.

Am I a hypocrite? Do I have poor memory? Or am I just inconsistent?

All of the above. :)

Personally, I would never charge someone to recover their corpse. This is
something that usually I can do in under 2 or 3 minutes, and it costs me nothing
but my time. Sure, sometimes I will say no, either because I am too busy at
the time, or because where they died would be certain death, should I try to
find their body for them. I guess the main reason I never charge people for
this is that it feels like I would be capitalizing on their misfortune.

Similarly, if I am headed somewhere, like from Kelethin to the docks, and
someone asks if they can hitch a ride on the bard express, no problem at all,
I'm going there anyway.

I look at running someone a great distance to be a different thing, particularly
if you aren't going there in the first place. Just as a smith can and should
charge people with the intent of making a profit because of their talent, I see
nothing wrong with a bard charging people for a service they would be
hard-pressed to come up with elsewhere. Nobody is making these people cross
Antonica, and if you can turn the trip from a dangerous hour long trip to a safe
20 minute trip because of your speed and invisibility songs and your guiding
experience, then I see no reason not to. Nobody would just ask you out of the
blue for this service and expect it to be free, right?

My two coppers,
Jyzan