Man, I would be very surprised if I was alone in this. It'd be nice if I could have accessed the cartel store BEFORE creating a character. Its a bit confusing when you log in for the first time ever, see a list of races that are locked behind cartel currency, knowing that I HAVE some coins because I paid for them, but I can't do the purchase thing until creating a character that I know I'm not going to continue playing, just to use the store.. I'm used to WoW where you buy something from the cash store and it goes in the mailbox of every character you create from then forward.
Anyway. its done now. was 300 coins.. it sucks but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ what can ya do (I mean, I will probably email support and ask nicely for assistance but I am not confident seeing as how I can't even remember the name of the character I created).