I jumped in the hot tub with my phone in my pocket last summer and needed a phone and couldn’t really wait for one to ship from a random eBay or swappa seller so I had to go to Best Buy.

They had nothing carrier unlocked that was newer than the 128GB iPhone 15 for $800, refurbished. All else they had was a couple old pixels and galaxies and they weren’t much cheaper.

Policies like impact the poor folks who can’t afford the cash for phones that are unlocked and are stuck paying high monthly service rates.