OK. I finally made the phone call tonight. I spoke to three different Apple representatives who kept moving me up the chain until I ended up speaking with rep named Drew who is supposed to be the iOS/iWorks apps expert.
After almost 30 minutes on the phone, he acknowledged that there is an ongoing problem that some users are encountering and that the problem is account related and not server related. He noted that there was nothing that he could do for me at this time and he promised that the Apple engineers are aware of the issue and that they are working on it. He said that he would be in touch with me in a time span that could be anywhere from several hours to several days and if I do not hear back from him, I should call or email him.
So, we are all in the same small boat, we all got the same response from Apple and we are all playing the waiting game now until Apple can fix this problem for us.
I will update again when I know something more. Good luck to us all!