how to tell if a virgin mobile phone can be activated

[seeyour]

i'm trying to buy a Virgin Mobile phone from ebay. and the seller says he doesn't know if the phone can be activated or if it is still active. but he gave me the serial number that i can go to the Virgin Mobile website to check. how do i check to see if it can be activated? thanx!

[budney]

The best thing to do is to call VM's customer service and tell them what you are doing. Then they will ask for the phone number & V-Key (password) or just the ESN (serial #) if you don't have the first two. With the phone number & V-Key they can tell if the account is active or not, or they can tell if the phone is stolen with the ESN number.