Before I begin, let me just say that I work in the press (UK Nationals) and am collating an extended article on MtGox. Any input you would like to give, please post here and I will do my best to include other's experiences.

I am in a similar position to
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=416760.0;topicseen

I opened an mtgox account in late December 2013, and decided that their 'website payment buttons' would be a good tool to allow visitors to my company websites (I run a press agency) the opportunity to use BTC to pay for our services. With newspapers finding themselves in a continued recession, they are finding less and less resources to pay agencies, freelance journalists and photojournalists. I know that offering BTC payments would open up a realm of possibilities for my clients and give them the opportunity to pay me, and my contributors using a method which is 'outwith' their normal yearly budgets.

I have sent all verification forms to mtgox (dec 16th '13 or thereabouts) and had hoped to be able to advise my clients that they now have the option of paying in BTC. However...

I sent a small amount of BTC to my mtgox account, to test the system (which, internally, works well as you all probably know) and I now find that after submitting 3 support tickets, mtgox has not verified my account, nor do they answer my correspondence. It seems that they are now 3 weeks behind on authorising existing users withdrawals, and from my understanding, months behind on support tickets.

As a result, I have been forces to disable the payment buttons on my company websites and am looking into alternative options.

My main bugbear is that although it is right that I shouldn't be able to withdraw fiat from my mtgox account until it's verified, I find that I am also now unable to withdraw the BTC I put in there to test it!

Has anyone had any similar experiences - are you a verified mtgox user and unable to perform simple transactions? how long have you had to wait for a withdrawal to reach your bank and how do you find their customer service, when they do eventually respond to your support tickets?

Thanks in advance.
For info - I am a freelance photojournalist and CEO of TheScribe(Europe), we are widely published in the UK and International press and personally, I have previously had front page content in The Observer, The Press and Journal, The Sun and Daily Record as well as many main section articles and photojournalist stories in all other UK national newspapers. I'm not just looking for your bad experiences with mtgox, but also your success stories (if there are any).

thanks in advance.