Activating an ebay-bought phone

I'm an existing vzw customer, and just bought a Samsumg a670 off ebay.
I'm not too keen on paying my local vzw shop $13 to press a few buttons
on it to activate, as I have a friend of a friend who works at a
Verizon-authorized Radio Shack, who says he can activate the phone for
me for free, but it'll be awhile before I can get to him, so I was
trying to see how to do so myself.

I heard many people say just use *228, but this resulted in programming
unsuccessful. I would think it's more involved that that anyway. So is
there a way I can pull this off myself, or should I just wait for the
guy?

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