I signed up for Bluemix a while back, when the Watson beta was first announced. IBM have been very nice, they keep in touch over email and phone to see what I'm working on (and I don't even have a paid plan). I'd really like to use the platform, but I just can't. For exactly the reasons you specified.

In my last conversation over the phone, trying to set up the tools to work with Bluemix, several "Getting Started" pages for important steps lead to 404 errors.