Update bump!
I'm glad no one else is chiming in on this thread - at the very least this indicates that the problem is not widespread and therefore hope (for me at least) that swapping out the phone will get me one that works better.
In the meantime, I've done a couple things: I went onto Samsung's website and did a live chat with a person no doubt from India (based on the name) who walked me through a couple things. This along with a trip to the Verizon store today with some suggestions to try to make it better.
Here are the two main things to try:
Make sure the phone is NOT in Global mode (mine was). To check this go to Settings -> More Settings -> Mobile Networks -> Network Mode: Make sure LTE/CDMA is selected, not Global.
Try turning on the Noise reduction. To do this press your phone icon then press the menu key, select Call Settings and then scroll down to Noise reduction and toggle that on (check mark in box).
Preliminary tests showed an improvement although I have yet to call from a bunch of different areas. The worst place was from my home and a couple conversations from there today gave me better results, although not perfect. There is still some 'blurping' or chirping noises but I could at least understand the conversations. At it's worst, I could not understand the other person at all due to drop outs and the chirping/screeching/blurping.
I'm keenly watching this thread for more reports of this. Supposedly if you believe the hype on the internet, this has been a rampant problem on Sprint. Not much on Verizon, but then again Verizon just started selling so it might still be coming. I hope not.
Also, the problem seems to be software related, and not hardware (again, if the forum chatter is to be believed) so hopefully an OTA update is in the works to fix the issue. I'm loving everything about this phone other than the call quality. But that needs to be fixed in order for me to keep. And waiting for an OTA is not acceptable.
Stay tuned.