Okay, what I really meant to ask was whether Verizon in particular is still incredibly dishonest about the process of bringing your own device as I had personally experienced. Obviously, the real solution is just to take your business elsewhere.

No, then again I wouldn’t recommend it now since there’s tons of mvno’s to go to that you can order online without dealing with less scrupulous store employees. Best advice I can give if you still want to do verizon/tmo/att direct is AVOID authorized retailers, only use the corporate stores.