Well, Rare fixed the commendation for selling flags, but there are other problems, people are not using many flags, they use the guild flag which doesn't count towards hourglass and flags from the same faction don't count towards commendations.
I'm playing right now, I won 13 battles, I only got 3 flags, 2 of which were guild flags and one was a reaper flag (the same faction I represent.)
I'm lv 1000 in the servant faction but I don't have the commendation because it was bugged until a while ago, now with the problem fixed it will still take me a long time to get something I should already have... at the current rate it's only around level 1200 to be able to complete that.
I am proposing that any flag won in battle counts towards the commendation and as a pvp flag, and taking advantage of this I ask that the other commendations that are tied to this system of only progressing with ships from a rival faction, accept defeated ships from the same faction, such as the champions for example.
