Help! Verizon sent me a replacement 8703e with the previous owner's private data still on it. Plus now Verizon wants me to relinquish my broken, unwiped original 8703e. What to do?

Verizon Wireless sent me a reworked, second-hand 8703e, or "Field Replacement Unit" (FRU) 8703e, to replace my 8703e that melted down after just 60 days use. Yet the Verizon replacement arrived -- and this I find alarming -- with the previous owner's private data STILL ON IT.

From the previous owner, the 8703e still contained:
* Two active -- and quite accessible -- email accounts. One a yahoo e

* All the emails of those accounts

* All her personal contacts

* All her calendar events for October and November, 2006

* All her logged calls

* All other data, unwiped.


Imagine a stranger having full access to everything on your BB! Think of the access that individual would likely attain from it to other parts of your life.

I find this alarms, shocks, and chaps the hell out of me on so many levels. I strongly believe in the protection and safeguarding of individuals private information. Yet, Verizon has allowed this infringement to occur.

It seems quite easy to envision how this occurs all the time. Perhaps even as the norm, not the exception.

An aside: I had hoped I would not report a "Part 4" to my Verizon 8703e woes. No luck. For backstory, read post: 397864.

Another aside: one painful part, this fricking switchover of my account has not occurred successfully on the FRU 8703e. Verizon has left me with a crippled, only-half functioning data networked device.

What I have done with the unwiped 8703e:
* First, I made a full backup of the previous owner's 8703e data.

* Wiped clean the phone, reinstalled BB OS so I could get it working and use it. (Still not fully data enabled, even after 2 hours with Tech Support.)

* Contacted Verizon Tech. and notified them they irresponsibly sent me the previous owner's private data, told them her name, and told them I intended to contact her and inform her about Verizon's carelessness.

* Took the full back up and emailed it to the previous owner (on her yahoo account) and notifed her of how Verizon had compromised her privacy. I included some plain text examples, to authenticate her private information about which I wrote. I also strongly encouraged her to contact Verizon and drop the hammer on them (hell, contact an attorney).


Question: What more should I do?


But HELP! Here enters my dilemma on this:
* I now have two 8703e's, my initial broken one, and the FRU one. Verizon now expects me to ship MY original phone back to them. It had a hardware malfunction, seemed to meltdown. It does not respond to anything, and that includes the ability to ERASE MY OWN PRIVATE DATA within it. I cannot wipe it clean if I must return ship it in exchange for the FRU one.

* This private data of mine includes: my personal contact information, communications, calendars, and records, not to mention confidential and private information about my clients. Once they repair it, they would likely have full access to it.

* Plus, as demonstrated with the replacement phone Verizon sent me, Verizon does not seem like it would hesitate to send it on to some other customer. With my private data..


Question: What options do I have?
* The way I see it: there's no way in hell I can send my phone to them if they cannot wipe the memory. Especially due to the client privacy issues.

* But, I do not want to eat the cost with which Verizon will slap me if I keep both. I don't even know how much that would run.


Thanks
-Andrew