I think the Verizon guy was 100% right. My mom is in her 60s and I just got her an iPhone for her first smartphone. She saw my Gnex yesterday and got a bit jealous, but there's no way in hell she'd adapt to this phone without prior smartphone experience. Get your mom the iPhone this time...
Just picked mine up, zero issues with being grandfathered in. If they lose the grandfathering, I might just start buying phones at full retail, even though I don't think I've ever gone past 2 gigs.