To answer the origonal question no this has not been the historic norm. Typically if you called once the contract was loaded MS would give you the temp password information to access your account even though there were no points loaded yet.
Maybe they is a new proceedure, or maybe you just got an CM who was uninformed or jsut did not want to "bother" since you could not book a reservation.
From my experiance and what others have posted 3-8 days to get the contract in is the common range and 0-3 more day to get the points loaded.
I do know that over the years the timeframe seams to stretch during adn just after spring break due to direct sales volume