What Causes a Bad ESN on a Virgin Mobile Phone

[sfnow]

I understand that you can get a blacklisted ESN on a Sprint phone by not paying the bill.

However, I'm seeing ads on ebay for Virgin phones with "bad ESN." How do you end up with a bad ESN on a prepaid phone?

[Pisceskid317]

Sometimes if they send u a replacement phone and u dont send them back ur old phone that will be labeled bad or any stolen phones will be labeled with a bad esn

[Churner]

Worst-case scenario is that it could be shoplifted from a retailer or reported lost/stolen by the owner.

It might also be the case that someone did the thing that is not discussed at this forum and moved the ESN from the phone that's for sale onto another phone.

[caphoneguy]

I can tell you exactly whats going on. I have many phones with this same status.

The phones are returns to a large electronics store. They are resold though corporate channels to the public (It's 100% legal, but I don't need competition, so I'm not going to tell you exactly how they do it.)

Some of the phones are deactivated upon return and the ESN is clear and ready for a new activation, but some are not.

The phones that are not deactivated are still considered attached to an active account. Those ESN's are not available to be registered to a new owner unless you have the six digit pin the original owner set up. Virgin will not release those phones to be set up on new accounts, because all they know is somebody bought a phone, paid for the first 30 days of service and then didn't "top up" or pay for the next 30 days.

I've talked many times with people at the electronics store, Virgin and Sprint (who owns Virgin) and nobody is willing to release those ESN's so the phone can be used for a new account.

So, at this point, there are two options for the phone.

1) Flash the phone over to another service provider like MetroPCS. Because the ESN is not activated in their system, they will activate a new account for you and you can use the phone.

2) If you don't want to flash the phone, you have to wait 120 days. After 120 days of not topping up (non-payment), Virgin will suspend the active account which will allow a new account with that ESN to be created by the new owner.

[dre-baby]

Pisceskid we have been fighting for almost a month getting my issue resolved. Very irritating that I have s hundred dollar brick now. I'm glad I gave it to a friend rather then selling it on CL like I originally planned and some poor stranger couldn't activate it.

[fonezfonz]

Throw it in a drawer for four months and mark the calender if you're not a person who knows how to flash phones. VM phones are very hard to flash and aren't worth the effort for most models.