For anyone out there looking for VZW to credit your account, I can offer the following advice...
When calling into VZW looking for some sort of compensation -skip the CSR... the most I ever had a regular CSR offer was 250 promotional minutes...on an unlimited plan.
Request to speak to a manager.
After reaching a manager, and letting them tell you their woes of stocking and shipping, and unexpected delays, (which will
always happen)

explain to them that regardless of what issues they might be unexpectedly having, there should still be some sort of compensation for the customer. Use the analogy of your monthly bill, which they expect to be paid on time, regardless of what unexpected issues might come up in
your life.
The manager that I spoke with initially stated that the only time they would offer a customer a credit was if their service had been 'impacted'. The manager defined 'impacted' (in this case) as my phone having not shipped out by the original promise date.
When she looked up my account and realized that the original "WILL SHIP BY" was the 25th she said she would offer a one time credit of half off my monthly access charges for that line. (don't let them try to bull$hit you and tell you that your date was an
estimated date...as I've posted before - their graphic says "WILL SHIP BY" and
always has)
Lastly, be nice... firm, annoyed, frustrated...but
NICE. CSRs and even managers are not the ones responsible for this fiasco, but they are the ones who get the dubious pleasure of dealing with it...and they are expected to discourage anyone looking for compensation due to VZW's blunder, if at all possible. As anyone in a customer service industry knows, especially in larger corporations, everything boils down to metrics... If a CSR or manager has a high amount of credits authorized by them... they'll probably be looking for a new job soon. I'm sure Verizon is fielding a lot more of these types of calls...and it wouldn't suprise me one bit if there was already an internal memo circulating around trying to deal with this issue, and discourage credits.
Hopefully this helps those of you looking for compensation from Big Red. Bottom line - wait until at least one day after your original date, possibly 2, before trying this tactic. It worked for me, and at least gave me a little comfort knowing VZW had to pay a little in return for my extended wait!