I went to pick my thunderbolt up from the local verizon store and they where having problems activating thunderbolts they had already opened. Apparently if the phone is powered on without the sim card and you skip through the initial setup to play with the phone it will fail on activation. We had to do a factory data reset before the phone would activate.
So my point is - make sure the phone hasn't been played with before activating.
So my point is - make sure the phone hasn't been played with before activating.