I went to my Best Buy (Iowa) and they had no clue about the latest emails or that they were supposed to register us for a replacement. After I told them what others here had experienced they looked in their systems and found a new notice describing the process to register/preorder replacement phones for us. Once they found that, it took about 10 minutes and I am officially on the waiting list. It was ironic though, they wanted me to show them my email from BestBuy and the posts here on the forum but said I wasn't allowed to power up my phone in the store.
I am going to wait to see how this turns out and may move to a Pixel/Nexus phone when it comes out. Only thing holding me back from just returning the phone now is we got a BOGO deal on the Note 7 and $300 in gift cards with the phone so I am hesitant to give all that up just yet.