[cschmid]

No carrier should be able to brick a phone without it being locked to the network. I did some research online, and it seems that the culprit here is actually Best Buy (and Apple) for selling phones as unlocked although they actually aren't: Apple sells iPhones to third parties under a 'US Reseller Flex Policy' [1], which means that they are automatically locked to the first carrier they are activated on.

Nothing on the Best Buy website gives me any indication of this happening. If this is really true, it's deceptive advertisement. I'm not a lawyer, but this looks illegal.

[1]: https://swappa.com/faq/answer/us-reseller-flex-policy

[mrjin]

If this was the case, then it is actually Apple to blame. Hard to believe there was such incessive practices. Under such scheme, the operator the device was locked(you will never know which as myself have multiple services and sometimes switch SIMs between devices, I assume I'm not alone) to might completely have no idea what was happening and I don't see a way that they can help the user easily.

[frogperson]

Try to buy a phone from best buy and not have them set it up for you. It's impossible, they will refuse to sell you the phone.

[alphabettsy]

They charge extra if you don’t activate the phone at the store.

[throwawayninja]

Few people will argue that freedom is free, shoulder the cost and enjoy liberty. It is absolutely a crummy business tactic however, I find myself spending huge amounts of time to buy directly from source instead of retailers / amazon / et al. The high-quality magnetic USB cables I originally discovered through amazon got pulled and I discovered ordering from their site directly was more painless than amazon.