Contracts are violated all the time - it's called efficient breach. Most of the time, there are no penalties either. If AT&T overcharges you, and you don't notice - they just take your money without consequence.

If you can get away with efficient breach of contract, do it. As a former lawyer who write contracts all day, I will give you a virtual high five.

Sure it may be legal but is it whats morally good? If someone / your employer entered into a contract with you to pay you for your legal services for a year and then efficiently breached the terms would you give them a high five and be fine with it? In your example, would you give AT&T a high five for efficiently breaching their contract and taking money from a subscriber?

Also I'm not sure if you're using the right terminology. From Wex, Efficient breach: A breach of contract in which the breaching party finds it cheaper to pay damages than to perform under the contract. [1]

You're not paying them when you unlock your phone out of contract so it wouldn't be efficient breach. It's just breach of contract. Also as you know it's not really breach of contract or not until a judge says so, so you can't just call contract violations that happen all the time an efficient breach.

I have a bit of legal education from years ago and I understand that there are many things that are legally "right" but there are other things to consider too.

[1]https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/efficient_breach

Most cell unlocking websites work this exact way, it's a huge network of insiders.

The "unlock marketplaces" is the place where people buy and sell online and offline unlock https://www.google.com/search?q=gsm+unlock+forum

This comment is so good I want to create another account just so I can upvote it twice.

> A contract was violated when these phones were unlocked.

That doesn't make it wrong. Fun fact, contracts are violated all the time, and not just between individuals and huge telecom companies, but also between large companies. If you have an issue with it you sue for breach of contract.

Violating a contract isn't a crime for a reason.

Just because something isn't a crime, doesn't make it beneficial to society, or morally good.

Sure. But the same generality applies to contracts, especially contracts of adhesion - their results aren't necessarily beneficial to society, or morally good.

Phone unlocking itself is definitely beneficial to society and morally good. An incumbent network provider being able to leverage a small market inefficiency into indefinite bondage is not a good thing, regardless of how its justified. Never mind the e-waste and surveillance issues.

What’s morally bad about unlocking a phone? Literally suggesting that it is morally bad to modify a device you own. If att doesn’t want people to mess with these phones than they shouldn’t sell it.

What contract? Most of these contracts have terms for canceling early. Like a fee to cover the remaining cost of the phone. After that point, it's their phone and I don't see a problem with someone using their property on another network.

When your contract is up they will unlock the phone for you.

> When your contract is up they will unlock the phone for you.

Not necessarily automatically.

Maybe you are referring to the FCC ruling on Verizon's request?

(I have not been following this too closely but here is what I've read)

My understanding is Verizon will (in the future) fight this ruling as well.

> "After the expiration of the 60-day period, Verizon must automatically unlock the handsets at issue here regardless of whether: (1) the customer asks for the handset to be unlocked, or (2) the handset is fully paid off. Thus, at the end of the initial 60 days, the unlocking rule will operate just as it does now, and Verizon’s customers will be able to use their unlocked handsets on other technologically compatible networks. The only exception to the rule will be that Verizon will not have to automatically unlock handsets that it determines within the 60-day period to have been purchased through fraud."

https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/06/25/fcc-says-verizon-ca...

https://www.fcc.gov/document/order-granting-verizon-partial-...

Remember, Verizon will LOCK phones that you paid for in full "to protect you".

Most carriers will force you to pay for this privilege - certainly all the ones I've ever had dealings with.

Does the contract actually say you’re not allowed to unlock the phone? Or does it just say that you have to pay an ETF if you cancel early?

I don't remember the exact wording, but the last time I had a subsidized phone (with T-Mobile) it was made clear to me that the phone could be unlocked after a period of time. The period was shorter than the contract period. T-Mobile even unlocked the phone for me before that time was expired when I explained that I was traveling to Europe and wanted to swap the SIM when abroad.

>T-Mobile even unlocked the phone for me before that time was expired when I explained that I was traveling to Europe and wanted to swap the SIM when abroad.

Thanks for posting that, as I had no idea it was possible. I personally don't buy locked anymore, but last year that definitely would have saved me some trouble.

>it was made clear to me that the phone could be unlocked after a period of time. The period was shorter than the contract period.

I am with T-Mobile as well, and IIRC there are two main options for unlocking:

1. After you pay the price in full early.

2. After 18 months on a 24 months contract.

Unlocking the phone doesn't break the contract though. AT&T is still going to charge you even if you stuff a different SIM in the phone. If you cancel your service then they'll tack on the ETF that covers the cost of the device. They wouldn't be losing money unless the guy was unlocking unactivated phones, which is an interesting legal area because technically he may never have entered into a contract with AT&T in the first place.

1. sign up for new phone at heavily subsidized rate in exchange for 3 yr service

2. after month 1 cancel service / credit card

3. sell unlocked phone on ebay

4. Collections agencies chase you forever over the ETF.

5. Your credit score suffers from an underflow after opening a million different credit cards to unlock a million phones.

>A contract was violated when these phones were unlocked.

Sounds like a civil matter to me.

Subsidy is when someone gives you money, cellphone contract is when you agree to pay back the $1000 handset in 12-24 hidden installments.

No.

First, a subsidy can exist in many ways. It's not explicitly "when someone gives you money". It's often the case that phones are discounted through deals such as buy one get one (BOGO), for example. When you purchase those two phones they are tied to a contract that states you'll carry new lines of service through the carrier that subsidized the phones for a period of time. That's one example of a common US carrier subsidy.

Second is when costs of a phone are spread out over a contract period it is credit, not a subsidy. The carrier gives the phone to the buyer on credit since they haven't paid for it up front. This is often done now so people can buy phones they may not have the capital for up front. In this way the carrier lessens churn by locking buyers into a continuous upgrade cycle. If they want out of their contract they have to pay the balance of the phone and any early termination fees (ETFs). To imply these are "hidden installments" is disingenuous as the terms are laid out in the contract.

The contract sucks shit that's why

> The contract sucks shit that's why

All those people were free to buy unsubsidized phones elsewhere. They knew exactly what they were getting into when they signed up.

Counterpoint: carriers don't always make it easy to unlock your phone even if they allow you to do so as per the contract. It can involve lots of back and forth with clueless monkeys in their customer service department.

There's also the issue of legitimately buying/acquiring a phone, finding it to be locked and having no idea which carrier it is locked to nor how to go about getting it unlocked. It isn't an easy process even if everything is legitimate and the phone was acquired legally and not stolen nor its IMEI/ESN being banned anywhere.

The truth is, phone unlocking is designed to be a shit-show on purpose and practices like these are just a natural consequence of that. Make unlocking straightforward and user-friendly (or just don't lock phones to begin with) and the market for these illegal things will dry up significantly.

> There's also the issue of legitimately buying/acquiring a phone, finding it to be locked and having no idea which carrier it is locked to nor how to go about getting it unlocked. It isn't an easy process even if everything is legitimate and the phone was acquired legally and not stolen nor its IMEI/ESN being banned anywhere.

It sounds like you're talking about buying a used phone. Sure - there's danger there. Danger which can be completely mitigated by buying at the owner's provider's store, and having an employee look up that info before giving over money.

If you want to avoid all that business, it's really, really easy to just buy from the manufacturer. If you do that, they always come unlocked, not stolen and not banned.

Broadly: locked phones suck. I would never buy one (unless it was used and on a network I'm already with). But I also know several people who cannot save money. At all. Subsidized phone plans are specifically tailored for those people. The subsidized experience will always be worse than strict ownership simply because incentives between the provider and the user are not aligned. But for those people who can't save money, I think this is the best option they have.

Yes, there is danger, however it's artificially manufactured danger. There's no reason why the process should be so awful. If phone locking does need to exist (it doesn't but that's besides the point), why is there still no webpages on manufacturers' or carriers' websites allowing me to quickly check whether a phone is locked based on its IMEI and whether it can be unlocked (so whether the previous account is in good standing and the device isn't stolen)?

I remember knowingly buying a locked iPad. Even figuring out the carrier it was locked to was difficult (why isn't that displayed on the system information screen or on the error when you use a different SIM?) and Apple were of no help either. I bought it because I knew this bullshit and decided to go through it anyway but it isn't a pleasant experience and shouldn't be considered normal.

There's also the issue of recycling and e-waste. You're telling me to buy new, which is fair but what about the countless locked devices that are perfectly functional and yet stuck in limbo because nobody can figure out how to unlock them (even if they are otherwise not stolen and the previous account was in good standing)? Should we just accept that these devices are essentially bricked and can go for scrap because it's not worth the trouble to unlock them?

This is a tertiary issue, but for carriers using locked bootloaders unlock them when you unlock your phone to go to another carrier? If not, then the device that's bought and paid for is still not wholly owned by the customer.

I've never owned a phone with a bootloader I couldn't unlock myself (unofficially or otherwise), so I don't know if this is the case or not.

I would argue that that your latter assertion is not the case, at least not here in the US. When I got my first cellphone in the mid-00s, you bought your phone on an installment plan from the carrier as part of the service contract, the purchase installments were rolled up with your and service fees, and that's the way the world worked, regardless of which carrier you chose. Bringing your own device was not a thing.

It wasn't until later that I learned that cellphones could exist independent of their carrier networks and be unlocked therefrom; that one (in theory) could purchase a phone somewhere else, and then bring it to the the carrier of one's choice to be configured to interface with that network. And I only learned of that fact because I am nerd who likes to learn as much as he can about anything he becomes involved in.

Most people aren't nerds or have nerd-like tendencies. Most people simply want a magic rectangle so they can have Snapchat and Twitter in their pocket. The carriers do little to advertise the fact purchasing phones independently is even an option. So I'd say, no, most people don't know what they're getting into when they sign up.

And lest you say that said terms are right there in the contract, while true, be honest, when was the last time you carefully read and understood all 40-pages of the EULA when you have a more pressing problem to solve? I suspect even you commonly simply click the "I Agree" to get that damn boilerplate out of the way so you can Buy The Thing already.

You give them too much credit. People don't read phone contracts and few people even know what an unlocked phone is.

Aka the system is working exactly as designed.

And even if you can read them, most people can’t comprehend them.

And even if you can, there can be bits that aren’t enforceable and effectively void.

Then buy an unlocked phone.

So don't sign it.