Way to clear a bad ESN?

[Mariox93]

I've read some other threads that involve info on the esn but i havent found one for my situation. Im looking into buying a Droid X on ebay and it says it has a bad esn. now is there a way to clear or fix it? any help is appreciated!

[wesscoggin]

Nothing legal that you can do.

If the bad esn is due to nonpayment of the bill on the part of the original owner and you have the ability to contact/trust the original owner, Verizon may let you replace the phone on the original owners acct with an old razr or something.

I did this about a month ago. I traded my F-I-L's Tilt2 for a VZW TP2. I confirmed that the esn was clear when I bought it, but my Father in Law didn't activate it for a month. I unlocked the sim for him so he could run it for the last month of his contract on ATT. When he went to activate it, the previous owner hadn't paid his bill and the esn was blacklisted for non-payment. The situation was complicated further by the fact that the person I traded wasn't the original owner and no longer had a way to contact the original owner. I went through about 12 VZW techs to find the one that would help me. She contacted the original owner (because she couldn't give me the number to call him). He verified that he sold the phone but didn't have a phone that he could replace it with on his account. I just happened to have an old razr that I kept. She let me "donate" this razr to him and put it on his account thereby releasing the TP2 in question from the blacklist.

If it's stolen, it is a totaly different situation and anything you do to try to get it activated is illegal.

Hope this helps.