I now do what a lot of people with the trusty 7868 Startacs do. When something breaks I take the phone apart and replace the broken parts with pieces from a pile of perfectly good Startacs that Verizon and the FCC have rendered only useful for spare parts. That works fine as long as the broken part is not the main board the logic and hence the ESN. I will keep my $28/month Startac plan with Verizon until that fateful day when the processor board breaks then I’ll switch to T-Mobile and a GSM phone that has all the ID stuff in the SIM card. It’s getting close. Just today I had to actually do a repair to the processor board. I just hope it holds. I really like the Startac 7868. It as thin as anything out there and actually feels like a real phone of olden times that covers your ear so your conversation is yours not the whole room’s.

I own a 2001 BMW with integrated hands free phone system which relys on the startac. Recently my phone got fried and will no longer work. I went to a verizon wireless store and they would not repair or replace the phone and suggested a third party (ebay). Then come back to get the phone activated to my current account. Finally got one and called to activate today. I was now told that they are forbidden from activating non e911 phones (even though I was using one until it got fried). After much moaning and groaning on my part they offered a free phone to replace (which doesnt help with the bmw integrated hands free system and emergency services option). They absolutely will not activate the phone for me. I tried calling several times hoping to find a sympathetic rep.

I have conceived several possible scenarios to address this problem.

1. Find a knowledgeable phone hacker who can do this for me without verizons help. Seems difficult to me since it would require information from verizon based on the new ESN.

2. See if a phone expert can repair my old phone using parts from the new phone. If the problem were limited to power supply this might be an easy fix. Or could all the components of the phone be switched out while still maintaining the ESN so verizon would continue to allow me to use the “same” phone.

3. Upgrade my cars phone system to bluetooth and get one of the newer compatible phones. This would be a very expensive option approaching $1500 in parts and labor and new phone.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Does anyone know any way I might accomplish one of the above or maybe you have another solution which may work for me.

Thank you so much for your time
Rich

Customer service AND the website refused to activate it. So now I’m stuck with an awesome phone that they won’t activate. As a last-ditch effort to outsmart the bastards I pay around $100 a month to for cell phone service, I’m trying to find software that will let me modify my ESN to match my existing Motorola V70’s configuration and silently get my way in the end. We’ll see what happens.

I was in Florida as Katrina was heading toward New Orleans and had purchased a used Startac off eBay to replace my falling-apart one– lots of hard knocks on it– and I went online to do the switchover as I had before.

An error message showed up on the new handset and it croaked on the spot.

I tried to reactivate the old one and the same exact thing happened!

After much swearing and railing at Verizon folks, I finally found articles detailing this problem as being commonplace, that Verizon was denying service to non-E911 phones.

I still think they actively killed mine.

I picked up a used E911 phone at a pawn shop for ten bucks and left Verizon soon after, never to return.