Yep you are to late. Because from what I hear from you, you can play them on era and you never purchased anything this mean, you had chosen for Era instead of TBC.
So shortly before Servermassacre Blizzard delated your TBC Clones as you so said you do not need them because you did not even activate them when the anouncement came and they where reduced in price again. Now you can only start in WotLK Level from 1 again.