An update on my open ticket with RIM. I called back yesterday, one week after opening the ticket and they said the development team is still working on it. The tech suggested I do a security wipe as he knows of one instance where it worked to resolve the problem. Another shot in the dark if you ask me. So I will wait and see what happens. I didn't tell him that i can access my bridge applications via the web browser just to see if they can figure it out themselves. What gets me in this is that it seems like such a benign and obvious problem to fix - 100% reproduceable, I can provide my device password via the browser and it works, so it has to be the bridge application on the playbook.
I have a whole bunch of other software issues with the playbook, the device manager, etc... I can't be bothered to try to get them fixed at this point.
Bad situation only getting worse for RIM.... 
