Okay, so my conspiracy of employees acting individually to buy for themselves or holding to sell to friends at the deep discounts was apparently wrong since this appears chain-wide and the companies are admitting to such.
So, what to do but make up another conspiracy....maybe it's a concerted effort to delay shipping so far that you don't get your reader in hand to clip your UPC from the box until well past the July 15 deadline for submitting rebate forms has passed
That's it, they must be trying avoid pyaing the 15 bucks rebate per unit...ah, what's a little bad press firestorm at a brick and mortar retail launch.
Seriously though, I don't care about definitions (recall or not recall)...I only care whether the Kohls batch IS really firmware instead of hardware, and that I get it approximately at the estimated ship date, but most importantly that the price is honored. I'd gladly update the firmware myself if they'd ship it pronto, lol, but that doesn't appear to be an option since I ordered online instead of going to a store.