Thanks for the heads up on multibit.
I was just signing up with them about the same time as you were writing your post. Wish I would have known. On the pwd issue, I had a problem with copy-and-paste. Multibit was picking up a bunch of extra characters ... somehow. Fixed by typing the pwd rather than copy-and-paste.
It's been week since I've tried to get some coin. Registered with 4 different exchanges and have not been verified (or rejected or gotten any response) from 3 of the 4. Coinbase is the only one showing any progress but their 12 and 24 timeout penalties for screwing up don't help. It's been a week with them just trying to get a CC recognized.