Wow. Just, wow... There are 120188 member on this forum. Even if 1/4 of us was able to provide an email / phone support, it's still more than 30 000 potential employees. Yet they hire someone who's never seen the website, or doesn't follow the updates on social networks.
Answer to first question:
As far as I remember, this feature was disabled intentionally. It was slowing the trading engine. Yes, it sucks.
Yeah they disabled it like a month ago, but then it will working just a few days ago, now note working again. It really sucks that they disabled this feature...
People have mentioned other exchanges; the truth is they don't have better support, and they don't have the same variety of features (especially API) as Gox.
I made a good faith effort to switch to Bitstamp but their API is limited (for example no way to generate a new deposit address) and their API seems insecure (you use your site username/password for the API, and can bypass 2 factor auth. when using API)
I have traded on BTC-e...but come let's be realistic...no one in their right mind would build a business around BTC-e