I've had my Nexus since November 2011 and paid $800 for the privilege. I don't regret it and have had no problems in all that time. Please keep in mind I have the HSPA+ version of the phone, not the Verizon LTE version.

I've used my phone with great results on T-Mobile and AT&T. You can't discount the possibility your Nexus issues are due to Verizon's LTE network which is still quite new and suffers outages regularly, though I doubt Verizon runs Voice over LTE yet in your area yet.