Hi Erik K,
It sounds like you are certainly frustrated about the Graceful Plea system, but I think you might also be suffering from some misinformation, or perhaps have misconstrued something. If so, I hope the following clarifies for you:
The Graceful Pleas have not, in fact, changed in any way since we brought them in. Every character gets 3 Graceful Pleas, which can be used for a number of things, including rebuilds and resubmissions and soul strand returns.
With Soul Strand returns, Graceful Pleas must be used to request a soul strand be returned for a specific death, and it must be a death for which you lost a soul strand in some way that was irregular or unfair. You do not need to have a DM/GM witness, but you do need to be able to provide some reason (not evidence, mind, but an explanation in your own words) as to why that death should not have happened.
We will take a wide range of reasons. Really. There are only three of these, so although they could be abused by players who were willing to lie, we trust the community to use them honestly--and for the rare exceptions, we have put the limitation of three in place to prevent any sort of wide-ranging abuse. We will reimburse deaths due to invis and G-sanc bugs, deaths due to exceptional lag (if this can't be reimbursed the normal way for some reason), deaths due to unexpected disconnections, deaths due to your wireless mouse running out of batteries, deaths because your toddler STOLE your wireless mouse and your poor character was forced to make some very bad judgment calls while at the mercy of their tiny jam-covered fingers, deaths because your cat grew jealous of your gaming obsession and decided it would be fun to attack your fingers on the keyboard. We will basically reimburse almost anything with a GP, except SS lost due to bad luck, bad decision making, or bad tactics.
With regards to rebuilds, restarts and relevels, I think there has been some confusion here as well. Again, a GP can be used to request a rebuild, restart or relevel, but we still follow certain guidelines. It has always been the case that some sorts of rebuilds and relevels need to be approved by the character approval team, and this has not changed with the updated policies:
"Rebuilds and Restarts fall under the jurisdiction of character approvals and must be submitted in that forum for consideration with accordance to the listed policy."
-Combined Disputes and Grievances Policy
The reason we ask clarifying questions when looking into rebuilds and restarts and relevels is both because we are trying to find the way to handle them that will be easiest for both GM and player (an in game relevel, an offline database edit, a full restart) and because we are trying to decide whether such things are not simply mechanical issues but rather RP/character submission issues as well. For example, GPs have been used to change feats in the past, change an ability point, take a relevel beyond the normal approval process, many other little mechanical details, etc., and we have not asked the player to submit to character submissions. However, something that fundamentally altered the nature of the character that had been approved (changing classes, changing certain specializations, etc.) does--and always has--need the approval of the CA team as well, since it is either a large change that will affect the RP of the character or it will change what was originally approved.
I hope this sheds some light on both the disputes, grievances and reimbursements processes, and also the Graceful Pleas. We understand that these are still fairly new and people may not yet be familiar with exactly how they work or why we sometimes ask the questions we do, so please, feel free to ask questions. We are always happy to answer respectful questions on either how things work or why a decision is made.
~Carillon