Open letter to Verizon regarding Tab 7.7 ICS Update

Question

Note: This is a copy of an e-mail I submitted to Verizon Wireless regarding my Galaxy Tab 7.7 LTE tablet, in order to ensure that Verizon receives the communication and to share the concern with the community which has substantially discussed the issue.  If this violates the content regulations of Verizon's forums, accept my apologies -- I have never been clear on the guidelines. 
Dear Verizon Wireless,
The primary purpose of writing is to notify you that I will be withholding 75% of my payment on the data plan for my Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7, in light of Verizon's degradation of service on this device.  Upon purchasing the device in June, I was told that it would be receiving the Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich" (ICS) system update.  By that point, ICS had been released from Google for nearly eight months.  In August, Verizon began updating its branded LTE tablets in earnest, but it was not until early October that the ICS update for the Galaxy Tab 7.7 LTE was formally announced.  After a failed update push, Verizon has been silent on any plans for the past two months.  Its response to a discussion on this topic in the Verizon Online Community was to simply remove comments and shut down the discussion without answering any of the community questions.
Most apps in the Android Market now require ICS or later.  The Google Nexus 7 tablet, a comparable tablet to the 7.7, is now shipping with Android 4.2, a full two major revisions past the version Verizon has yet to deploy to the Tab 7.7.  Additionally, I personally have experienced increasing instability with the tablet, with the network failing and requiring a manual restart multiple times a week.
At whatever time Verizon successfully updates my device to ICS, I will happily return to paying my bill in full.  Additionally, I am more than willing to discuss this with a Verizon agent to come to a better resolution.  However, given Verizon's current response of ignoring the problem and providing no explanation, and continuing to offer a degraded service below that which was promised upon purchase, I must take this step in an attempt to protect my interests.
Again, I would much prefer an amicable solution to this situation.  Please feel free to call me on my Verizon phone number to discuss this.

Answer 1

In regards to this, I'm going to post excerpts of a post I placed in another thread with additional research about update timelines, Verizon's extremely loose interpretation of the word "soon", and the despicable service provided to owners of this tablet, as it relates to the specifics of this thread's topic. I am also including significant additional information relating my attempts to acquire additional information.
I purchased the Galaxy 7.7 in April this year. Like most (if not all) others, I bought it with the promise of an update to ICS soon. At this time, eight months later, I, like the vast majority of owners, am still on 3.2 (Honeycomb). Honeycomb does not support many of the apps I use, and more developers drop support for it every day, as its device presence percentage drops close to that of Cupcake and Donut (Android 1.5 and 1.6) and has already sunk below Eclair (Android 2.1), according tohttp://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html (This is a direct link to Google's own site, where they publish such information; last sample conducted over 14 days ending Nov 1, 2012).
...My local Verizon corporate store is selling the tablet with ICS pre-loaded. This means the software not only exists, but has been successfully deployed to retail units.
...The original Droid only took four months to get the 2.1 update, and the 2.2 update followed five months later in August of 2009. Keep in mind, these updates were being developed between these pushes, with 2.2 only being announced by Google in May of '09. That is 3 months from announcement to deployment. ...
Our Galaxy Tab 7.7's have now waited 13 months since the release of 4.0 by Google and still are not up to date. I'll permit Verizon the few months that they did not have the tablet, but this reduces the delay to "only" 9 months, two to three times longer than it took for other devices to be upgraded. Oh, and we're still waiting on the update. It might be suggested I'm being unfair at this point by comparing a dual-core highly advanced tablet with a much older, single-core phone that came out while Verizon had far fewer smartphones to maintain, so I'm also going to compare it to the Motorola XOOM, a contemporary device with similar hardware and software at release.
The Motorola XOOM was released February of 2011 as an incomplete project, again with the word "Soon" attached to those missing features. It took 6 months (August) to receive the SD card update. Similar to the original Droid, though, the update was only made available from Google in June, meaning it only took two months for Verizon to deploy the upgrade once it was released by Google. The LTE upgrade came out just a month later in September, seven months after the launch of the tablet. This delay could, theoretically, be pinned on Motorola, but my suspicion is that it originates with Verizon. Android 4.0 took seven months from the date it was published by Google (November 2011) to be released to Verizon XOOM owners (June 2012).
Galaxy Tab 7.7 early adopters have now waited an extraordinary nine months since their tablet was launched for their "Soon" to be fulfilled, and there's no end to the wait in sight as Verizon actively avoids communicating with their customers on the matter.
Explanations can do quite a bit to quell customer anger, as can simply finishing the update and publishing it.  We've received neither, and the existence of the updated software on new units being sold adds rather grievous insult to dysfunctional software that has become an injury to those who rely on this equipment to function.  I feel this is paramount to telling us that we, as existing customers, simply do not matter.
I have two further pieces of information to add that were not in my original post.  Today I contacted both Samsung and Verizon Wireless about this matter, directly.  The Samsung rep was, unfortunately, either incompetent or completely uninformed.  Nice, polite, but unable to provide any relevant information due to either Samsung's rules or training, or lack of personal knowledge.  The Verizon rep was far, far worse.  I'm a very polite person when speaking (I'm in sales, I have to be, even to people who are being rude), and I didn't even get a third of the way into describing the issue before I was being interrupted by this defensive, crass individual.  When I finally managed to get her to listen to my problem, her response after a minute of typing on her computer was that it was "currently available" and "[she] has no way to push it to my device" and "[I] have to wait for the network to push it".  I very calmly explained to her that the documentation she was looking at was from October (she acknowledged spotting this on the documentation once I pointed it out), that the update never came through and was pulled due to issues, and that I knew both methods of forcing the tablet to check for updates.  She then claimed that a coworker had handed her a Tab 7.7 running 3.2 and that it was the "current version" and that Verizon had never offered an upgrade to 4.0, in direct opposition to her earlier statements and my own eyes.  This...farce went on for nearly twenty minutes before I ended the call.
It was the most insulting, rude customer service I have received in years.  I felt like I was being talked to like one would address an errant child, not a paying customer.  The last time I was treated this way by a cellular carrier, I left them, switching from Sprint to Verizon.  Unfortunately, I am stuck on Verizon at this point due to unlimited data and hotspot on my personal line, and extraordinarily heavy personal usage, but I have no such motivation to have a 3G/4G tablet through them.  I prefer it due to battery concerns, but an extended battery and larger phone are worth the cost of never having to deal with Verizon's spectacularly awful treatment of their tablet customers ever again.
Even though they're keeping my account, it's shrinking by two tablet lines.