Family Share - A CRUEL 365-day lockout, REALLY?

Question

I bought my wife a new 128 GB iPad mini 3 on December 15th at Best Buy, I had been saving for this iPad for some time, and Lori had wanted the new iPad mini 3. Both my wife and I have bought multiple iPods over the years, use them, abuse them, and they just keep on playing through the abuse. We have brought 6 iPod of various generations through the years.  I was so impressed with her iPad 3, I decided to buy myself a 4th Gen iPad.  So Lori and I now both have iPads.
Lori has had her iTunes account for years, and she has bought a ton of music through her account, and we shared that music, with multiple iPod devices over the years.  It worked out great.  In the last two years Lori has been buying more TV Shows, and currently she has bought about 10 movies, so we watch the TV shows and Movies on our Windows Computers.
But now that both of us have iPads, well we wanted to setup family sharing.  I had been hearing and semi-following all of the trouble that Apple was experiencing since the roll out of Family Sharing.  I gained this awareness of the problems by reading many editorials and articles by seasoned Apple device owners in various online blogs and some major editorial sources.  So I was a little leery of jumping into Family Sharing, but I read the process and I thought let’s give it a go. So a few days ago, I decided to print the Family Sharing Technical How-To Articles from the Apple Support web site.  I read them multiple times and attempted to accomplish the feat.  Well it turned out to be a feat a feat which is now impossible to resolve for us apparently.
I thought I understood the process, but ultimately I got confused with the whole process, although the first time I set Family Share up I had actually done it correctly but for whatever reason, it still would not allow us to share.
Bottom line I left Lori's family group, and I recall thinking to myself, maybe I need to setup myself as the Organizer thinking that this might be the way to get our sharing activated.  Well I would find out later this was not the correct approach and may have sunk my ship.
So I decide to ask for help, I opened a case with Apple Support on Friday February 13th, 2015.  I still don’t know what the problem is at this point, all that I know is that I cannot get Family Sharing to work.  So I tell the Apple Support Representative what is going on and the Rep asks me impatiently at this point as if he needs to be somewhere else.  Quote: "Why do you want to enable family sharing", (I thought REALLY)...... OKAY I admit the question just baffled me.  So I said slowly…...because I want my wife and I to be able to share content back and forth with each other, I have come from a Windows world, and I told him my wife and I plan on migrating to Apple computers.  So we figured we would get this whole family sharing thing all setup.  I tell the Apple Support Rep that Lori my wife has a great deal of existing content, purchased as in Music, TV Shows, Movies, and iBooks. She has a lot of content, and I want access to it.
What THE APPLE REP said to me next blew me away.  You have left Family Share twice, and the rules state you will not be able to enable Family Share for 365 days on the device where this occurred. (End of Story) mine!
I was not going to accept this, I wanted to have them explain the rationale for this customer service nightmare He says I don't know if we can do anything for you, but I will send it the a Tier 2 representative, and see what they say, he then says, but since it is 3:30 on a Friday afternoon, everybody is starting to leave so I am not optimistic that anybody is going to call you back today, as we are all leaving.  Then the young man stated the best we can do at this point is to talk with you on Monday. So I accepted this, I made certain he had my correct cell number and although frustrated, I waited till Monday.
So when Monday February 16, 2015 rolls around, and I hang by the phone all day, no contact at all.  So I start searching the Apple Support Web Site, to see what now, how do I proceed, well I was given a case ID so that was good, at least everything we had done will be saved in the CASE ID:  748510224
Well not so fast, it turns out that rather than try and call me back the Support Representative just up and closed my case.  An email was sent to me wanting me to give them a rating of how great the service was. (NOT)
So there was no attempt to bring resolution and try to come to some satisfactory solution.
Bottom line I am stuck with the inability to Share these beautiful brand new devices two brand new iPads that I paid at close to a grand.  Apparently I cannot even set Family Sharing up with these devices, well least wise not for another year.
The events over the last several days and my experience with Apple Support have given me pause regarding Apples. It’s a huge disappointment.
I still want to move to a MacBook Pro, and my wife still wants to get her iMac with Retina Display.
My singular Question:  Is this how this must end? With us waiting for a whole year to get Family Sharing operational? This because I left my Family share twice on my iPad device.

Answer 1

That's better than the response I received. The supervisor with whom I spoke earlier today told me flat out there's nothing they can do, and I just have to wait a year.
I do hope they're looking at a solution for those of us who were just playing around with the feature to see how it works. I understand the rationale, but considering that there was no warning that the account would be locked out, that "solution" is uncharacteristic of Apple and simply unacceptable.