We get the phone home and try to activate it on the website only to get an error. We try several times, it still insists we call support.
We call support using my phone. And Virgin Mobile tells us that someone has already activated that ESN, doesn't offer to deactivate the scammer, tells us to return the phone after we've already ruined the packaging opening it (what is with those insane bubble-wraps everything is using these days!!?), blah blah. Practically seems to tell us we're trying to cheat when we have the phone in our hands out of fresh packaging.
Uhm. Someone is using a cloned phone. Deactivate them and let the legitimate buyer onto the network! How hard is that to understand? But apparently they would rather be lazy and not do any actual work despite the fact that it just takes a few keystrokes at a terminal to correct this. Furthermore, cell phone cloning is a very common scam ... and costs the carriers millions. But apparently, they (or at least Virgin) don't care -- more convenient for them to make us do all the work.
We are most certainly NOT going to pay restocking fees if Best Buy starts demanding them, since they sold us merchandise with the fair assumption that we would be able to use it. Virgin Mobile is cheating us by refusing to let a legit subscriber register a legitimately purchased cell phone. I call that breach of contract. And Best Buy is going to eat their fees.