Bad ESN?
I did a little looking on previous posts about ESNs but I am still confused about somethings. I am currently looking for a new phone and when searching on Ebay many posts say "bad ESN". If I were to buy a a phone that said bad ESN would I still be able to use it? Does the ESN come with the phone or is it on my account. I don't think I really understand, in laymen terms, what an ESN really is. Thanks for any help!
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The ESN is the Electronic Serial Number. It is attached to the phone and must be entered into your account to activate the phone. If it's a bad ESN it's probably on the Lost/Stolen list or something of that nature and won't be able to be activated.
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vzwinagent said:
If it's a bad ESN it's probably on the Lost/Stolen list or something of that nature and won't be able to be activated.
unless of course you change the esn, which is not easy, but possible.
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The Electronic Serial Number is unique to every phone, or the new MEid that has been implemented. Every phone has its own MEid/ESN to distinguish the phone to the mobile telephone number. If it is listed as "bad ESN" on ebay, i would shy away from it. That is either a lost/stolen ESN or a locked-down phone. Locked-down means it was part of a list of phones recalled from an agent that will never be sold again due to whatever reason they were pulled from the agent.
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I know the original posting was a long time ago, but just in case people are still confused. A bad ESN means the ESN is either black listed (reported as lost or stolen) or still tied to an account (which means the account it was with still owes money). Either way the ESN is bad, which means you cannot activate the phone. A ESN is the serial number of THAT phone, althrough there are ways (illegal) of switching a phones ESN, typically it does not happen. To learn more about ESNs, or if you would like to check your ESN to make sure it is clear for activation on the Sprint network, you should try www.checkESN.com.
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