I know this has been done before, but I have a situation in which the conditions are a bit different. I bought a Motorola T720 on Ebay, new, but the logo on the front says “verizon”. I wanted to take it to Cricket to have it turned on, service, etc. I have access to the unlock code, and I needed to know if I use it, if I will be able to activate it through cricket, because they are notoriously picky about things like that, and will straight-out lie, saying that they can’t activate a phone that has ever had service through another provider.
If that’s the case they’re going to know it had verizon service unless you replace the faceplate. In any event you’re going to have to ask Cricket if they’ll activate this phone. Unless it’s the correct type and band it may be a moot point. Most people who switch carriers get a new phone and just keep the number.
If it’s a phone model that they offer (and it just so happens that yours came from Verizon), you’ll most likely have no trouble setting it up on their network. A quick call to customer service and you should be in business.
If it’s a trimode phone in the US that operates on their network type, it’s a hit or miss situation. Sometimes it will work, sometimes it won’t. What it generally boils down to is whether or not their system will accept your ESN. With Sprint, for example, I was able to activate my old phone on their website using the ESN. Their computers accepted it, and it worked fine on the network. A friend of mine, however, was not able to activate his phone on the network.
Your best bet is just to call up customer service and request that they switch your service to your new phone. They’ll ask for the ESN, and if it takes, they’ll have you program the phone from there.
Well, technically their network should support the phone; Cricket and Verizon both use CDMA. They might still have administrative reasons that they can’t activate the phone (e.g. they don’t want to activate a phone they didn’t already make a profit from, or one they haven’t tested with their network), but PhoneScoop says Cricket used to offer the T720, so you may be in luck. It’s possible that the Cricket and Verizon versions use different firmware, though, and if Cricket doesn’t carry the T720 anymore, they might not be able to flash the correct firmware onto your phone.
The 6-digit unlock code shouldn’t even be necessary, because AFAIK, Verizon doesn’t lock their phones.
grr, now I’m confused! The front faceplate says verizon, but when I open it up, the little screen says Qwest. Does this matter? I’m guessing this person did the same thing I’m doing in taking it to another provider… This is all very weird, as I got the phone in new condition…
If it says Qwest on the screen, they were the last provider. I concur that you will just have to try to start the process.
Cricket and Qwest are PCS (1.9 GHz) carriers and Verizon is mostly a Cellular (800 MHz) carrier. The T720 would at both of the bands and also does analog Cellular.
All three carriers use CDMA.
Verizon has publicly stated that they do not lock phones. I haven’t seen what Qwest’s policies are, but “denial of service” seems to be a tactic that is used by the US GSM carriers.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4416003/