I have now registered twice and had no response from customer service. I see dozens of other people on the forum with the same issue. This needs to be resolved and someone from apple needs to speak up.
And the solution was this. On my iPhone. Not on my computer I noticed a tiny red dot at the bottom. Apparently I had to accept a stupid terms and conditions type doc. account activated instantly. I cannot believe it took two weeks and a long call to apple customer support. This level of poor ux and customer support is not acceptable when paying the apple.premium