I was going to respond in Shirl's thread, but since this seems to be the *official* bitch thread...I will reiterate what was communicated in her thread.
I, also, don't think giving COTB's power to lock threads is a good idea. Yes, they've paid for sponsorship and that was one of the perks, but I think having your products promoted on a site which purports to have over 100,000 members is compensation enough. Yeah, peeps can start other threads in protest, but because some of those, many times, become more vitriolic, they are locked as well. I think it's best to only allow Mods to lock. JMO, as asked.
BTW, I've not had any probs with our Ombudsmans, so as Plunkey said, they must be doing their job well.