From what I have seen or heard about, it looks like the exchange program is starting to fade as people have made the swaps. I did check and while my dad traded in his second Note 7 almost immediately the recall occurred, he is only just now getting his credit at his fourth billing cycle. His really was automatic with no communication on his part so that part of it at least was accurate.
I still say there should have, and could have, been a better process in place given how any Verizon store, or online rep, can see a customer's account. The credits/refunds/exchange costs could have been applied in some form or fashion without the intermittent credits or the three month wait for the full Samsung inconvenience credit; they should have been applied immediately.
Even if the credits had to be applied later, maybe Verizon was waiting for the reimbursement from Samsung before applying them to the customer accounts, which I can see to a certain extent, there was no reason why the customer had to pay upgrade fees and taxes on the exchanged phones up front with reimbursement later; those should have been waived on a kind for kind trade. Walk-in, hand them the Note, get the new phone, walk out. Cost reimbursement for differences in price etc as credit applied immediately to the current billing cycle and not necessarily refunded in place..I can understand that as well.
It was the delay and intermittent application of the reimbursements, and the ongoing lack of consistent knowledge/information, that irritated people. I would hope Verizon is taking a look at this particular business practice and are revising, or even creating, a better response effort in case an event like this ever happens again. Problem is, the risk of it happening again to this level is low even if the impact is high.
, would be nice for US vendors to offer this same deal for the people affected by the Note 7 recall that went with other phones.