Can Verizon shut me off for switching carriers?

Question

Ok so I recently went through a really bad breakup. The Verizon bill is in my name and on it is an iPhone 5 (my phone) and a Nokia Lumia (ex's phone). I called tmobile today and they're sending me a SIM card overnight to put in my iPhone then I can get their service for $60/mo. My iPhone is due for an upgrade and had been for a while but I've been saving it for the 6. The Nokia however is fairly new and I don't have money right now to shell out for the phone bill and the early term fees. I intend to pay verizon about $100/mo until my bill is paid in full. My question is if I can't start paying them right away, can verizon shut me off even though I will have a tmobile SIM card in and running off their network? I have good credit but the Verizon bill takes a back seat for a few months while I get things in order. Thank you!

Answer 1

indcolts18288 wrote:
Here is what I keep finding
Identify hybrid CDMA/GSM Phones.  If the phone is unable to activate on a CDMA carrier such as Sprint or Verizon the blacklisted IMEI could still have the ability to be used on a GSM network. Many of the phones manufactured lately come with a GSM standard, micro or nano sim card slot and have GSM radios allowing for use on a GSM network. Likewise, many of them come factory unlocked even if one of the major providers sold the phone. Such an example is the iPhone 5 from Verizon. If you happened to have a bad ESN iPhone 5 you really don’t have a problem, it comes factory unlocked! You won’t be able to use it on Verizon again, but you should have no trouble using it on another GSM pre-paid carrier in the USA or Internationally. In fact, the phone sold as unlocked has a 15-20% better value than if you sold it on Verizon. One of the first models of this type was the Blackberry Storm several years ago. I remember customers wanting cash would offer extremely low price knowing it had a blocked ESN number with Verizon not knowing that the phone came factory unlocked and was good for AT&T or T-Mobile. All that was needed was a setting change to deactivate the CDMA radio and activate the GSM one.  Lastly, make sure that the bad IMEI phone that has a GSM sim card slot actually has a radio and the correct cellular bands to allow service. Some phones such as the original Nexus had a micro sim card slot, but the radio connected to it was only connected to the 4G network not GSM quad band network.
Wow, you really don't get it.  The USA universal blacklist (which is also shared with some carriers now in Canada and Mexico) is a universal database of blocked hardware IDs.  Any device in the list is blocked by ALL carriers from connecting to their networks.  No device on any network anywhere on the planet can connect to a carrier's network if that carrier blocks the device's hardware ID from connecting.
Believe what you will, but universal blacklisting really does render the device useless on ALL networks sharing the blacklist.
And yes, Verizon has already reportedly been adding devices to the Blacklist for breach of contract, failure to pay and so forth - just look in Verizon's own user forums for the tales from those who got stung buying a Verizon phone only to find out the seller had skipped out on their contract, and their nice new phone is basically useless pretty much anywhere in North America since Verizon added it to the blacklist database.