Agreed on PEB being unbound as its the only ingredient people can't pass to a crafter. Only way around it is to run quests and have them pass tokens or agree on AS price and put in ASAH but there is always a chance, however small, someone unintended grabs the item fast.Well, I agree with what you've said here (admittedly I continue to chafe against the idea that CC shouldn't make the same power level as random loot, but since I think random loot's power level is too high in the first place overall I'm happy with the power level of CC if I take it in isolation, if you see what I mean). There's a few other things I'm not that happy with either, but they're also livable with for me.
My actual issue, i.e. 'I really think this is a problem' is not the power level or the expense. I'm fine with expensive. Its availability of just one ingredient - specifically PEBS for making unbound items for others.
Right now on Lam, to get a crafter to make you an item, you need to somehow pass them something that is almost always bound (or possibly they're always bound I can't remember - its been a while since I turned in any small/medium/large eberron fragments because they're so rare that I still haven't replenished any stocks of those since turning in the small stacks I'd built up since I started in 2009). The game has no way for them to do that, except in quest chests.
Heroic players can't run epic to get tokens of the 12. They can't even enter the quests and pike at the start so as to pass me their tokens so I can trade in for PEBS and make them something!
I just don't follow the PEBS inclusion for unbound loot at all - at least, not if their availability and binding status is staying the same. The idea I've heard some people posit - that only people who've been through a TR or two should have any expectation of usefulness from CC unless they level it themselves - is mystifying to me. This doesn't motivate new players to engage with the community, it doesn't incentivise existing players to level crafting in order to benefit anyone but themselves - and even then only if you're willing to endure the inconvenience of character hopping and passing loot around the apparently fragile mailing system* to crunch because crafting will still be character specific... none of it adds up to a positive idea, to me.
If Turbine just went as far far as providing a guaranteed way to get heroic turn ins which could be passed to me in chests to then trade in then this issue for me would go in my 'can live with it' pile and I'd be back to being excited about the CC update for more than personal power reasons.
As with Tokens of the Twelve, at least then we could quest together to get the thing the player needs so that I can be sure of being able to make them something at the end of that time.
*seriously, the new mailbox limits put in place to protect performance have meant that my crafter started bouncing mail to me the other day, and I'd only cleared out their mailbox the day before! I wasn't using him as a bank, I just only wanted to swap to crunch once that gaming session!