As a data point, I sent something to Grand SF a few days ago and got a prompt and polite personal R in less than 12 hours.
I sent something else in about a day ago. Haven't heard back on that one yet.
Adjusting stories to EXACTLY 1000 is a huge pain in the butt though. I asked if they'd consider looking at stories in the 950-1050 word range with a caveat that, if a story is accepted, the author must edit it to be 1000 words exactly. They said no, which seems a bit silly to me. Because different word processors will produce different word counts anyway -- and what happens if the story needs some minor editing which would change the word count?