“ Originally Posted by spidercheck04 
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so i would have to grab his account and switch it with any old phone or u think i could go to sprint and see if they can switch it with my phone???
Since the phone you have right now is linked to his Sprint account and he either owes money on it or does not use it the ESN is still linked to it. Therefore the phone is still active and is consider a BAD ESN and it cannot be added to another account.
What should work is if he gets an cheap Sprint phone that has a clean ESN and does a phone swap with the phone you want, the phone you want will then have a Clean ESN and can be activated by you.
However, if he owes money on his account that he has not paid for a while and tries to do a phone swap they will not do it. If that is the case he would have to either pay the money he owes, then do a phone swap, or cancel his account.