Mooncatt
Ambassador
I'm officially in this club as well... not that I wanted to be. My carrier is Verizon and my S/N starts with 508.
I'm really pissed off about this. Had to switch to my old Galaxy S4, and I'm not 100% sure when I'll be able to get into the Verizon store I bought the G4 from.
*sigh*
Give their main line a call. You can set up a warranty replacement through that without having to go into a store. They will ship you the replacement second day (sometimes overnight). You activate it, pull everything from your old phone (battery, SD card, back cover, SIM card), then send the old one back in the same box with their pre-printed shipping label on it. It's rather painless.