Yes. I had an issue linking my original social.bioware.com account with my SWTOR account, so I was agonizing from 3:17am EDT through 4:36am EDT, on July 21st, when I was finally able to enter my pre-order code, after getting my accounts properly merged.
I knew on the day of release that it mattered how quickly you put in your code. People were freaking out in the early morning about not getting codes emailed fast enough.