What card you get actually depends on where you bought the phone, not anything to do with Verizon.
I bought mine at the kiosk at Costco and I got a no-name brand class 2 16GB card that failed on me. But for $12 including shipping on Amazon I got a Sandisk class 4 8GB (I didn't really need 16GB anyways).
Why not have Verizon give you another working card?
Tried that, but since it was a different brand of card than the ones that come bundled with phones from Verizon, they wouldn't do it. They said I would have to go back to where I bought it to exchange it. I did that, but the way Costco works is that the card and the phone act as one unit, so they can't exchange JUST the card, they would have to do the phone as well and give me a whole new phone and card (with the same cheap no-name card in it). My phone was fine, and I didn't want to risk using another cheap card (only learned that it it was a cheap card when I tried to exchange at VZ!).