I think the the biggest problem revolving around this whole situation has been a complete lack of communication from both Verizon and Samsung. When the Gaax S line of phones began rolling out, Samsung promised that thy would be receiving a Froyo update in a "timely" fashion. Most people gave them the benefit of the doubt and took their word for it, myself included.
Now, here we are some nearly 6 months later, and still no Froyo (at least for any of the U.S. versions). It's been delayed several times. For us Fascinate owners, it was promised "soon". Then it was promised "by the end of the year", yet still no Froyo. It's led a lot of people to a lot of tension and frustration over the matter, but where I think they made their first mistake was lack of communication.
If either Verizon or Samsung had come forward at some point during this entire process and told the consumers "Look, we're working on the update. We apologize it has taken so long, but this is the reason we are having problems delivering the update in the original time frame we had given you ---" then I think the backlash wouldn't be nearly as bad. However, that's not what happened. Instead, they keep giving the same statement every time, that they're working on it and that's all the information that they an provide.
I understand that a lot of Samsung or Verizon reps may truly have no idea what the details of the situation are, and that's fine, I don't expect them to. But surely Samsung as a company knows, and I'm sure Verizon does too. All I ever asked for was some sort of official statement from one (or both) of them explaining the situation at hand. The common denominator here is the U.S. carriers. Froyo has been available outside of the United States (even Canada) for quite some time now.
Rumors fly, and people add fuel to the fire. It's not hard to start a rumor. Personally? I still to this day think it has something to do with the carriers here in the U.S., it has to be, otherwise why do other Galaxy S phones around the globe already have a stable version of Froyo available to them? Do I think Samsung is charging U.S. carriers for the update? No, quite frankly that always sounded a bit ridiculous to me, and I stand by my statements in the past that carrier bloatware has at least a *small* contribution to this mess.
Just my $0.02.