I would love to know how this is the case. Character transfers has been done twice already and I'm just taking a guess here but probably more than 75% of all characters were moved during those transfers.
Do you think that they copy and pasted entire servers together? No it was an automated system and it still exists. Go into your my account and you will see that 2nd down on the left is character transfer. Try to use it and it says not available at this time, but it's there already.
The real question is, and why the title of this thread is appropriate; Is what are they waiting for? I personally don't think that this should be a paid transfer at all. It wasn't my fault that my entire guild quit because of unilateral decisions made by Bioware. Yet people are lining up with fistfuls of cash waving it at them and they still won't bite.
I do truly feel sorry for the people stuck on APAC servers. They should be given top priority. There's a thread started in June 2012 begging for some kind of consolidation and they're basically still being ignored.