Short story: I got the crippled Verizon Razr V3c for free to replace the V710, so that my brother-in-law can have a replacement phone.
Long Story:
A couple days ago I got a call from my brother-in-law, who happened to use a cellphone that’s on my family plan, he told me that his car has been broken into (in Junction City, welcome to Redneck Country USA) and everything have been stolen, including my cellphone. So I immediately called Verizon to suspend the line, turned out that Verizon has a new system dealing with stolen phones - record the ESN number so that they cannot be activated (take that, rednecks). So whoever was unfortunate enough to buy it on eBay, will find out that they paid good money for a stolen phone that can’t be activated. (Another reason to not buy used cellphones on eBay).
Knowing that to upgrade to a Razr, I’ll have to pay $100 for the upgrade, but I could get it for free if I just wait for 4 more months (with the free-every-two plan). So we decided that we’ll both pay $50 and give him my old phone. Then at the Verizon store, the rep only charged me $50 (because I am a merit member (thanks to my $150 monthly bill (thanks to my sister-in-law’s 1400 minutes addon))), and gave me a $50 mail-in rebate form with a recipt stapled to it. So basically I got the phone for free.
As excited I was, I quickly turned the phone on, finding that they have transferred all the address book items over. However, the interface is totally lame and I would rather perfer the default interface Motorola has. Besides the interface which I can deal with, they have also crippled the bluetooth feature, which lead me to the firmware downgrade, and now I can finally enjoy the file transfer via bluetooth. I would really like to know how to sync calendar items though :-\
do you know for sure that someone bought your stolen phone on ebay?
no.