The problem is this team of monkeys coding the game cannot reliably code a character transfer to and from the test server.
Them doing it manually sounds about right - he'll they're probably even editing the databases with ad hoc code to get it done for each character. What a sloppy mess, and it's going to really hurt for 1.2 because the changes cannot be tested except by a few guilds hand selected by Bioware.
I'm sure this code wasn't in place though because they didn't foresee such low populations and people wanting transfers, or the need for hyped up 1.2 already because of the low populations either.
And then Georg has the nerve to come out and bash those complaining about the changes because they, the player not on the test server, hasn't tested them yet. Unreal.