Well what are they doing during that "certification" process? I know I've heard that term tossed around many times over the years. Verizon certifies these updates. I've read things that said they have their own vetting process.
While I can certainly agree with you Pere that it's not 100% the fault of the carrier, I definitely feel like it's more than 5%.
And as for not contacting VZW about a bad update, no, I wouldn't. Have you spoken with VZW customer service? No offense to them. They do what they can with the training they have, but they have no clue when it comes to more advanced things. So of course I'd go directly to the manufacturer, because they're more likely to have someone available that know what they're talking about.
Just so glad that I went with a Nexus last time I bought a phone so I don't have to worry about this.
Manufacturers can definitely be slow to push out updates and I'll concede what someone else said earlier that VZW has beaten AT&T to the punch a couple/few times recently, but that's not been the case historically. If you're going to base your argument on the manufacturer doing their thing to make the update work on their devices and then handing it off to the carrier to sprinkle their pixie dust (love that, btw), then there should be no excuse for VZW releasing the Note 4 lollipop update CONSIDERABLY later than
@mountainbikermark got the "same" update on his AT&T Note 4.
Not to mention, watching review videos where they show certain features of the device like the ability to change the view of the settings menu. There's supposed to be 2 options. Mark and I went round and round when we first got the devices because I was swearing to him that that wasn't there and he was swearing to me that it was.
I blame the carriers for these different variants of the software, which impact the updates that come. Maybe VZW doesn't do MUCH with the updates, but they obviously make Samsung (in this case) make the tweaks and changes that they want done, so I still hold them at fault. That said, I'd still contact Samsung if I was still using the Note 4 and this update broke something.