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Contact the owner of a business account?

A

askepios

Lurker
So I'm in an odd situation here. I recently bought a phone from eBay, nice and new and all. Only issue is that it's already active on an account. I've had bad ESN phones before, but this one was a bit different. It's on an account already in good standing on an unlimited data-only plan.

After a little investigating, I found out that it's a line on a business account that apparently has at least ten lines. However, I can't find any way to see who the owner of the account is, or find anything about the business at all.

The phone was supposedly won in a drawing in a tech conference. It sounds legit enough, but it's still eBay and it's good to have a certain amount of suspicion. If the drawing thing is true, the only thing I can figure is that it was a drawing for the phone with service for some period of time. That said, does anyone happen to know if that's a common giveaway for any type of tech conferences?

Basically, it would be very helpful for me to be able to use the phone right now, but I'm kind of iffy about it at the moment. I'd like to be able to contact the owner of the account and find out for sure that it's not like...stolen or something. Or wasn't supposed to have service in the first place. But I can't find any method of actually doing that. I don't want to end up getting myself arrested for fraud or anything, but I also don't want to pass up something like that if it is legit.

So any help is appreciated. I don't expect that this is a common situation, but maybe someone can offer advice.
 
Welcome to the forums,

Have you tried to call Verizon? Also can you get a hold of the seller and see what he says. If I remember correctly google gave developers phones at google I/O last year and there were similar problem to what you are having when they were ebay'd.

Verizon may tell you what the problem is without giving you privileged info ortehy may contact the business owner for you. Either way I would agree with you that you should follow up on it before assuming it is a freebie.
 
skilaufen said:
Welcome to the forums,

Have you tried to call Verizon? Also can you get a hold of the seller and see what he says. If I remember correctly google gave developers phones at google I/O last year and there were similar problem to what you are having when they were ebay'd.

Verizon may tell you what the problem is without giving you privileged info ortehy may contact the business owner for you. Either way I would agree with you that you should follow up on it before assuming it is a freebie.
Click to expand...

I contacted the seller already. He didn't know of anything regarding service, but he wasn't really sure about it either way. Not terribly helpful, really, but I didn't push him too much.

I talked to Verizon about it a bit before, but that was before I really had an understanding of the situation. They looked into the phone a bit, but I don't think they knew anything more than that it was active on an account. I think they even assumed the account was locked. Seems to depend on the rep you get in the store. A lot of them are...not so bright.

I'll probably give it another chance now that I know what I do. I doubt they can give me anything specific, but I don't see any reason why they couldn't just contact them on my behalf. I was hoping I'd have luck doing it through My Verizon, but it gives pretty much nothing on the owner or overall account.
 
askepios said:
I contacted the seller already. He didn't know of anything regarding service, but he wasn't really sure about it either way. Not terribly helpful, really, but I didn't push him too much.

I talked to Verizon about it a bit before, but that was before I really had an understanding of the situation. They looked into the phone a bit, but I don't think they knew anything more than that it was active on an account. I think they even assumed the account was locked. Seems to depend on the rep you get in the store. A lot of them are...not so bright.

I'll probably give it another chance now that I know what I do. I doubt they can give me anything specific, but I don't see any reason why they couldn't just contact them on my behalf. I was hoping I'd have luck doing it through My Verizon, but it gives pretty much nothing on the owner or overall account.
Click to expand...

Try calling 611. They tend to be more helpful and knowledgable in my experience than store personnel who are more interested in selling you a new phone than they are in helping you with your current phone.
 
Press the menu button, then Settings, then About Phone, then Status. This should give you the phone number of the phone, and the IMEI number in case you need to call Verizon.

I think you can also call Verizon from the phone just by dialing 611. Your phone number and account should appear on the operator's computer screen when they answer the call.
 
John Jason said:
Press the menu button, then Settings, then About Phone, then Status. This should give you the phone number of the phone, and the IMEI number in case you need to call Verizon.

I think you can also call Verizon from the phone just by dialing 611. Your phone number and account should appear on the operator's computer screen when they answer the call.
Click to expand...

That is correct if you call 611 then they will be able to determine your phone's info.
 
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