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Do the contracts not stipulate that if you cancel your service for any reason, you're on the hook for the remaining price of the phone? Surely if I didn't care

Do the contracts not stipulate that if you cancel your service for any reason, you're on the hook for the remaining price of the phone? Surely if I didn't care about cell service and just wanted a pretty nice wifi camera, they're not going to let me sign up for a plan and then cancel it immediately. Assuming they're not that dumb, I don't understand the point of locking.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
Because pursuing someone for a debt is not the same as getting paid for it. The lock on the phone reduces the risk of nonpayment from the borrower, and effectively allows for cheaper financing.
- ndriscoll 4y ago
  > The lock on the phone reduces the risk of nonpayment from the borrower This seems pretty non-obvious to me. Maybe it reduces the incidence of straight-up theft, but if someone runs into financial difficulties and can't continue paying for service, they can get more on the used market with an unlocked phone and use that money to pay off the debt/exit the contract. Obviously that's not an outcome the carrier wants, but now we're back to locking as a mechanism to keep people stuck to the carrier.
crazygringo 4y ago
You're generally on the hook for the rest of your contract, not just the phone. But if you just don't pay, what are they supposed to do? They send it to collections, which has a small recovery rate. It's far more effective to use the phone lock. And the culprit here hacked into T-Mobile's systems to get around their procedures. I also wouldn't be surprised if he was being paid precisely by a lot of people who signed up for contracts and expensive phones with a stolen credit card and stolen identity.
- from 4y ago
  > And the culprit here hacked into T-Mobile's systems to get around their procedures. I also wouldn't be surprised if he was being paid precisely by a lot of people who signed up for contracts and expensive phones with a stolen credit card and stolen identity. These people (or the people who buy phones off them) are almost exclusively the major customers of any unlocking service, at least with iPhones. Which for some reason is something the rest of the people in this thread fail to understand.

lotsofpulp 4y ago

Because pursuing someone for a debt is not the same as getting paid for it. The lock on the phone reduces the risk of nonpayment from the borrower, and effectively allows for cheaper financing.

ndriscoll 4y ago
> The lock on the phone reduces the risk of nonpayment from the borrower This seems pretty non-obvious to me. Maybe it reduces the incidence of straight-up theft, but if someone runs into financial difficulties and can't continue paying for service, they can get more on the used market with an unlocked phone and use that money to pay off the debt/exit the contract. Obviously that's not an outcome the carrier wants, but now we're back to locking as a mechanism to keep people stuck to the carrier.

crazygringo 4y ago

You're generally on the hook for the rest of your contract, not just the phone. But if you just don't pay, what are they supposed to do? They send it to collections, which has a small recovery rate. It's far more effective to use the phone lock. And the culprit here hacked into T-Mobile's systems to get around their procedures. I also wouldn't be surprised if he was being paid precisely by a lot of people who signed up for contracts and expensive phones with a stolen credit card and stolen identity.

from 4y ago
> And the culprit here hacked into T-Mobile's systems to get around their procedures. I also wouldn't be surprised if he was being paid precisely by a lot of people who signed up for contracts and expensive phones with a stolen credit card and stolen identity. These people (or the people who buy phones off them) are almost exclusively the major customers of any unlocking service, at least with iPhones. Which for some reason is something the rest of the people in this thread fail to understand.