nice to see the large amount of responses to the pwcc new policy, especially in light of the bid retraction issue was something i proposed a change in recently and the response from board members was mixed:
http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=224524
i started that post after a conversation with brent highlighting this issue and learned that they had policy changes in process. now that we see the culmination of this process, a couple of thoughts on how to improve it:
1) a starting point of 25 bid retractions on the ebay platform over the last 6 months is much too high imo. an ending point of potentially 5 is also too high. i have read the posts on legitimate bid retractions and find all of them underwhelming. i would suggest starting with 4 as a trial balloon and within a few months at most ending with 2. the actual number is less relevant, thankfully, if the first part of the policy change is rigidly enforced -- if someone has 2 bid retractions on pwcc's site the user's account will be suspended from further bidding on their site.
2) string bidding does not bother me because every bid the user makes could be the winning bid...unless they retract the bid. the intention of the bid is not very relevant to me as long as the user is willing to pay the bid price. no one can police intentions. we can police non-payments/bid retractions. what's relevant for all of us is that a "real" market price is reflected by their bid given the expectation they maintain the bid and pay for the item if they win!
i think this is a very good start from pwcc, would just like to see more teeth on the bid retraction number and reconsidering string bidding.