I don't trust this phone to last much longer, so I am making a preemptive move, but I would like to migrate the phone to service for my husband (who doesn't use a cell phone now). Is there anyone who might be willing to activate a working 7135?

you could try sprint-- the may have gotten more liberal in their policies. My brother's 6 month old sprint phone went on the fritz, so I loaned him my 7 year old sprint phone, it was activated ok... of course, they may not have the 7135's esn in their system, but you can always call up and get new service for you and ask to add your "old cdma phone"
otherwise, get your husband the new HTC Touch on sprint--they have some good deals on it (letstalk.com $99 for new subscribers after rebate).
also, you could try alltel (not offered in all areas) or there is some prepaid service that may take 7135s (search this forum), but ymmv
if your 7135 won't be accepted by anyone, I'd be happy to take it off your hands
good luck!
Adam

I just activated one on AllTel just a few weeks ago. If they have service in your area, I'd give it a try.

- 2 Bunny

Thanks all!! Right now we are in a holding pattern because Verizon won't activate my new phone on the pre-pay service because "It is a smart phone" My response to "I have been using a smart phone for the last 5 years" is ignored. I figure I should try several different agents before I tell them to stuff their service.

My heatiest recommendation would be to "stuff their service" .Trying more agents will be a waste of time.

Yeah, Verizon has had a lot of excuses for not activating these lately. Do they have online activation?

- 2 Bunny

They do have online activation, but not for the phone I am trying to activate. The only thing to do now is to use up all the extra money I have on the account and move to someone who WANTS my business.

Good choice. Like I recommended before, you might want to try All Tel.

Sprint is okay too, but they are now among the lowest in customer satisfaction out of most of the cell phone carriers (just saw it on the Yahoo! news today)

- 2 Bunny

It might be worthwhile to note that Verizon has made an offer to buy Alltel. If this purchase goes through, all of us Alltel customers will become Verizon customers at the mercy of the Verzion and their restrictive practices.

If you want prepay service I recommend Page Plus. They run off of Verizon's network and have much better rates and they will activate the 7135. Good luck!

I agree with Dolittle - Page Plus is the way to go. They unlocked and activated my Verizon 7135. I've been using Page Plus over one year now and I'm very happy with the service. Their rates are quite good for my purposes, and you can roll over unused minutes. Try an online search for them.

I am actually set up as a Page Plus dealer. If anyone wants to activate a 7135, I'm happy to do it for free. Last time I checked, they were still giving 100 or 200 free minutes of service for a new activation (the dealers don't make a dime on activation from the company so it's up to the dealers to place whatever charge they think they can get on the service, I just choose not to). They're rate plans are fairly good for a pre-paid but they lack some service options or price them a little too high for me to want to use them for anything other than voice.