I certainly hope you do not work for Verizon, pherson.  Your motto seems to be "Verizon can do whatever they want, any fault lies with the customer."

I pay $2,352 a year on Verizon's service, their 'prerogative' shouldn't be to break promises, blame slow network speeds on congestion, and put their own interests over their customers'.  Verizon is about control and always has been.  They constantly trap their customers by demanding carrier specific phones (most newer phones have chips that support CDMA/GSM/LTE all in one), locking down their network (Nexus 7 LTE), and not future-proofing their networks (i.e. the now slow LTE).  I am not debating that AT&T is a better company, but the reason their service is more attractive than Verizon's is because their GSM and LTE networks are open (your device doesn't need to be 'certified' to run on their network) and they have always been focused on keeping their networks fast (as I stated before, in my area their HSPA+ 3G network is faster than Verizon's LTE network).