Can an Iphone with bad ESN be activated?

I'm looking at buying an iphone 4 or 4s from ebay, a lot of them on verizon say bad ESN. Does anyone know if it would work if I was to buy it, get it unlocked and change it to a New Zealand network? Iphone's here are stupidly expensive.

Won't work at a phone ever with a bad esn. It can be used as an expensive ipod touch

If I'm correct the esn goes "bad" for a given service provider. If it's flashed over to another service provider then it should be fine. I'm almost certain that's how bad esn's work. You should ask the service provider you are planning on going with to be sure they can even flash it over to their own network.

On a side note, are you sure new Zealand even has cdma networks? Because if not then buying a Verizon iPhone will do you no good. You would need a gsm (SIM card) unlocked iPhone.

Sorry you can't.