I just got off the phone with a member of the verizon Wireless higher ups, Mr. Avram Polinsky, Executive Relations Coordinator at Verizon Wireless, in regards to an e-mail I sent to CEO Lowell McAdam about the July 16th update. I was told there was no update for the Incredible. The only update was for the Eris. He said there is an update being worked on but he couldn't state when that is going to be released. He said there was no update coming in the immediate future. (Guess that squashes the Froyo Rumors) I talked with him about the signal and call quality issues and he stated that HTC and Google were working on the issue. He also stated he was on the various blogs and is aware of the rumors going around. He apologized for the mis-information and stated the persons who gave the bad information about the July 16th update would be dealt with. So to sum it all up, according to Verizon Wireless Executive Relations, there was no July 16th update, it was an Eris update only, and there will be no updates in the immediate future. There is one in the works, however he has no idea when it will be released, and when it does, it will take about a week to reach everyone, so it doesn't overload the system.
This is a mix of common sense and Customer Service 101. You are simply not get to get someone at Verizon to confirm an update until they are ready to make the official announcment anyway. Like someone said, why would they tell a random customer "yes, we are working on an update and it'll be ready soon" when they know that 2 minutes later that person will get on some fourm and say "So Verizon just told me the update is ready and will be out next week!"
As for the rumor starting employee, I don't buy that either. My last job was very heavy on customer service work. Do you want to know how many times in those 6 years I promised a customer that a offending employee would be "dealt with"? Hundreds! And 99% of the time I got off the phone, went to the offending person and we both got a good laugh.
I also sent over a hundred "form" letters where I would thank the person for their call and let them know that we are using their experience as a training opportunity for our employee's to ensure that it will never happen again. All total BS, of course.
What I am trying to say is... the Verizon employee that you spoke to didn't tell you anything that any reasonable person doesn't already know. In fact, he told you nothing. Which is what a person very skilled in CS learns to do. Tell you nothing but make it sound like something important.
Yes, we are working on an update. Well duh, we know that already.
It will not be released in the immediate future. Yes, we know that, too. He's just setting reasonable expectations and it's a nice way of saying "it'll be ready when it's ready".
When it's released it will be released in batch's. Yep, we already know this, too. This is actually for two reasons, but of course he only mentions one because the second sounds bad. Yes, it could overload the systems. But more importantly, a controlled release gives them the ability to kick it out to a few people and if anything goes wrong they can pull the remaining updates until they fix it. It is to minimize problems more than anything.