Can I sell my activated iPhone 5 Sprint?

Yes you can sell it, but you will need to replace it with another phone. If you are under contract, i.e. you bought the phone subsidized, you are still obligated to make those payments. If you bought it free and clear, just tell Sprint you're done, sell the thing and be off on your adventure overseas or wherever.

 

Regardless of the phone, you have a service contract with sprint (you've been getting a monthly bill). That contract is tied to your credit card. What are you going to do about it? Two options:

Pay your early termination fee: THEN you can have sprint unlock it for you, THEN sell it as a non-contract (buyer expects this) unlocked phone (desirable as most people don't want to be tied down to a carrier, specially sprint.)

Or

Just leave the country and ignore the bill: Sprint will pursue you and ultimately put a lien on your credit. It works I suppose if you are leaving the capitalistic world and go live amongst the PapaGuinea Indians.

 

Make sure you call sprint and deactivate the phone on your account before selling it. If not then the buyer will not be able to activate it on their sprint account

 

This brings up a good point. What happens if I buy someone's phone that is under contract, activate it, and then the original seller stops paying his bill? What if he tries to claim it as lost or stolen after I've been using it? Normally, carriers (especially sprint) will blacklist the IMEI or ESN. I wonder what happens once its been activated on another account?

I bought a used iPhone 4S on eBay. I activated and it works great. I checked its ESN with apple and found its under warranty until this coming June. This means that it hadn't been in service for than 6 months (when I bought it). If seller gets into trouble with sprint, I wonder if sprint will bust my balls too?

 

If seller has a few hundred transactions, it should be OK, If only 5, Ooooops.

Before eBay history disappears, make a copy of the Ad, transaction, Paypal record blah-blah so u have proof. The more detail, including an IME# on the Ad, the better. If 2-lines Ad, Oooops.

 

Well, all this boils down to is what the carriers can and cannot do to second hand owners...

 

Once the person deactivates the phone from his account it doesn't matter to you whether or not he pays his bill because his account is no longer attached to that phone.

 

I mean you will need another phone to replace the iPhone that is to be deactivated from your account. You can't have an account active without a phone registered to it.
To answer your last question in the op, tell them the truth, like you can't use it where you're going, it's ESN is clean, it's not broken. Cover the basics and it will practically sell itself.