honest question then:

this means that Verizon is telling us when we ask that some amount of money is owed

ok, fair. i love the straightforward honesty here, and i understand that that's probably the limit of your knowledge- money is owed, but whether it's for an unfulfilled contract, or device payment plan, or past-due fees, etc., is unknown to you- is that about right?

so why then:

a quote from a chat transcript:

Your phone belongs to one of the categories that Verizon has restricted from operating on Verizon towers outside its own plans. Why they do this? I am not sure

is this a valid response? i mean, i understand that a customer probably doesn't want to hear that they can't be activated because they owe money of some kind, but why is there a lack of transparency in Ting's product/service knowledge in the chat that was quoted, versus what you're saying here?

or am i genuinely misunderstanding the post?

a lack of transparency is something that i (and others, i think) have noticed in recent months. obviously i'm not singling out you specifically, because you were straightforward with the facts here, but if OP's copy/paste of Ting rep's chat interaction is correct, someone somewhere isn't doing as good a job as you are.