Two "new" S7s, Neither Will Work On Cell Network

[Bonden]

Wife's old S7 is looking pretty beat and having occasional charger cord issues. Wanted to avoid paying $700+ for new phone, and very happy with our S7s.

Bought two Verizon S7s "new in box" from ebay (one for me also, and keep my old S7 for a solid spare). Seller has 3326 feedback, 99.4% positive. Sez "544 sold" on page. Price seemed decent. Both phones came in new boxes, seals unbroken. What could possibly go wrong?

Activated one, usual DIY online. Observations/problems/actions listed here (and compared to my good S7 on same acct):

• Fully charged battery seems to last very well over hours.
• Signal strength indicator: circle/bar (none), or most often, empty triangle with no bars, or very occasionally one bar, or one bar of 3G, or one bar LTE (no 4G symbol) that disappears to empty triangle if dial out attempted. My S7 has 3 solid bars of 4G LTE in same location.
• Signal strength ("asu", under SIM Card Status): 0 to 5 on new S7, 32 to 45 on my S7, same location.
• Calls: was able to complete one of 10 attempted outgoing, but call dropped within seconds. Could not receive any incoming calls of many tried.
• Texts: a few SMS came through over a period of a couple hours, but several were blank boxes with basic info like date/time/filesize w/no actual text content; outgoing texts failed.
• Rebooted phone and removed/reinstalled SIM several times.
• Got on PC to chat w/ Verizon tech support for several hours. Reset all network settings there, and on phone, and checked all possible other settings, until he finally said it’s the device or the SIM card.
• Put SIM back in previous phone and it worked good, so not SIM or account problem.
• OK, so seems it’s a bad device. We bought two, let's try the second...

Same exact result with second S7, except this time I didn’t bother with hours of tech support and came here instead.

Conclusions:

• If one was bad and one good, no problem, return and get another good one--but both are bad.
• Until I have a better answer, it seems both phones may be part of a bad batch and are being sold off to ppl like us. But that doesn’t jibe with the seller's good ebay feedback rep and "544 sold" (if 544 were sold and bad, the guy either would quit selling because return costs were eating his lunch, and/or his feedback would be horrible)...
• There may be some setting or other detail causing the problem, and someone here knows about it.

Any ideas, observations, comments, wisecracks? Is it common for "new old stock" to not work? If so, why are they so obviously popular on ebay, etc?

[vzw_customer_support]

I am sorry about your recent devices not working, Bonden. It definitely is strange that both devices are not working. I definitely do hope you are able to return/exchange the devices with the seller. When purchasing devices from third party sellers, it's good practice to confirm the device is compatible with our network. I know they may state that the device is new and compatible, but we want to be 100% sure. You can use this great tool to confirm prior to purchasing: http://spr.ly/6603Exa1c . I hope this information is helpful. 

MarshallP_VZW

[Bonden]

Thanks for reply. As I pointed out, both S7s activated OK on account but very weak signal strength not allowing correct function. Spent several hours on chat with Verizon tech support...guessing  if either S7 not compatable would not activate on account, and tech would have noticed. 

But thanks so much for your DETAILED ATTENTION to this matter.

[vzw_customer_support]

You’re welcome, Bonden. We know the importance of managing the costs of a new device. We’d love to look for some savings for you. For instance, did you know you can put a down payment down and lower your monthly payments? I’ve sent a Private Note to discuss things in more detail.

GeorgeS_VZW