thanx for the replies guys, i have been on the live chat with a sprint representative and on the phone with a tech service agent last night ant it still doesnt work....

they told me do dial ##DATA# and restore the profile, soft reset and then attempt to update the profile via settings but it fails every time with error code 67 / incorrect username/password... i flashed to stock rom before this and hard resetted BTW and no dice... i think it may be a hardware problem cuz everytime i try to update my settings and fails, the username of the previous owner always goes back and thats maybe whats going on. but to no avail the device updates with my info...

the USB port damage that they mentioned was to connect the device to a diagnostic machine and since its damaged it cant connect to diagnose the problem so i guess im stuck then...