I'm not going to report you, but i'm sure everyone that visits these forums (including me) would rather have respectable posts and would take them more seriously if they weren't in direct attack of microsoft/verizon, or other forum visitors for that matter.
There is no one out there denying that they screwed up; it's pretty obvious they did. They didn't flat out rush it, they had internal problems and went from one almost complete OS, to a completely different one based off Windows CE. That set them back almost 2 years, and in the phone business, that is an eternity. That is why many features on here feel outdated, and that is why they had to just release what they had. But it isn't to say that their customers didn't know of all of it before-hand; or to better state it, it isn't to say that their customers shouldn't have known about its problems before-hand. With the original Kins, yeah i can understand cause no one really knew what it was, but with anyone buying a Kin 2m/1m, you know what you are getting, and it is as simple as do you let the good features outweigh the bugs and 'incompleteness', or do you let the bugs outweight the features. I respect your opinion, but the sentence 'I enjoy owning this phone and it's disappointing to see how much they gimped it and how little faith and support they put into the product' isn't quite coherrent.
Not everyone loves their kin; read the product reviews, about 1/3 of them dread it. But the big difference is, those that hate them don't stick around with them and don't stick on that specific phone's forums. And regarding the phone's support, you can pick out any feature phone, and none of those have top-notch support either; they won't be getting any updates or anything. The one big difference between those and this, is they are 'complete' phones and were advertised by verizon, whereas the Kin m's were re-released under a bad name of their failed predecessors. Yeah, it boggles me too why they didn't fix bugs they already knew about such as forwarding texts and so on when they already were editing the firmware.
Regarding buying the unsubsidized or used phones: yes, it is completely fine, i never said anything otherwise. Yes, i believe data plans are over the top and hence i don't have one or want one. What i simply stated is even if you do buy a 'smartphone' and try to activate it with your current non-data plan, you will automatically have a data plan activated with it. You can go ahead and try it. And unless you pull strings regarding that (activating a smartphone without a data plan being tacked on), it is 'required' per verizon policy, and any other cell service provider at that (at least with the big 4). The way around that is with an unlocked phone, like you said. I know people who have androids, iPhones, and you name it, without a data plan. But i just prefer staying with the non-unlocked phone; reasons why, i can provide, but they really don't matter cause i'm not going to get an unlocked phone. I'd rather just fork out the cash for a data plan if i wanted a smartphone that bad. But since you advocate them so much, i was simply stating i'm pretty surprised you don't own one, and have a Kin 2m instead. Yeah, requiring a data plan is pretty lame..but you aren't required to get it if you think about it. If you already own the phone, you can use all of the functions of the phone perfectly fine; but the moment you try to activate it with verizon, try to 'subscribe' to verizon's phone service, you then become subjugated into Verizon's policies. Common business practice; you want to be a customer, you agree. You don't like the policies and don't agree, then you aren't a customer.
The part that almost 'inclines' you to be a customer is the fact that all the service providers (again, i speak of all in regard to the big 4; sprint, verizon, tmobile, and at&t) do the same thing regarding data plans and smartphones, and that is the flaw that allows those companies to do this, the fact that it is 'quazi-monopolized' and there isn't a competitor to the policy. Look at Europe, Asia, their phones are far superior to whatever we have here, and i'm sure their service providers have much more competition that they can't limit their 'smartphones' in this way, because the next competitor will allow smartphones without data plans and all the customers flock to them.
Why do i own a kin? Cause it is my best alternative to not having a data plan, which means no 'smartphones'. Would i rather have one? yeah, probably. Will i justify the data plan for the better phone? probably not. And you look at the market out there, with all the feature phones available, the Kins are the best option for me. I don't know too much about other service provider's selection of phones, but i know the trend that Verizon's selection is rather limited in comparison, but Verizon's service is 2nd to none in my opinion, and you just gotta weigh the pro's and cons. Even with the generally worse feature phones with verizon though, i still think the Kin is better than every other non-data phone (smartphone) on any of the services.
Here's a link to another post i made a while back that will hopefully provide you with most the features of the phone, as well as pro's and cons and help you make your decision. Good luck!
If not, Verizon's return policy is 30 days, but there is a $35 restocking fee.