So I talked to one of those Verizon reps yesterday, pretty sure they are real people. At least the one I talked to was. I know this because we talked about the video game Destiny for about an hour after he answered my questions haha, so definitely not a bot.
Anyways, he seemed honest and less useless than some of the others that you all have talked to. Basically he told me that since the official website says it is under testing, than it most definitely is under testing, but that there was no way to know whether the holdup was Microsoft's or Verizon's fault.
I stressed that our concern was if we were going to get the update at all, now that the Icon has been retired.. He confirmed that while it had been retired from sales, that shouldn't at all affect our update, priority, or support for the phone. It simply was what it was, retired from being sold by the company. He also said that it was not a matter of if we get the update, but when. And that he had been hearing "sometime in autumn" for the Cyan update for us, and that being the case we should have it by the end of they year for sure.
Unfortunately, if I understood correctly, we are more than likely in for another long wait for Denim, as it will be going through a similar grind of testing that is holding up the launch of Cyan. I do believe that will be a much easier and less stressful wait if we get Cyan soon though.
He made a good point while we chatted. He reminded me that the reason we are waiting so long is probably because of very thorough testing, which means that everything should be smooth and perfect when we finally get it. Let's face it, we would be in more of an uproar had we gotten a buggy, broken update that all but bricked our phones in August.
I wish I had gotten the chance to save and post my conversation with the guy, but I was on the work laptop at the time and couldn't pull that off. I felt like he was an open book compared to some of the other reps I have heard horror stories about. Then again, he could have been blowing smoke. But I am trying to stay positive, and I believe that in about a month we will all be running Windows 8.1 smoothly on our Lumia Icons.