Back when contract pricing was a more regular thing, I ended up doing the math on the plan rate after I requested for the device contract subsidy to be removed as I didn't want to upgrade the device. I had a Droid DNA at the time.
The monthly rate dropped by $25 just to keep the same device. (Nevermind that I had to ASK for them to not continue to charge me the extra $25/mo after 2 years)
$25 a month for 24 months is $600.
The device on contract was $199.
Full retail price if you didn't opt in for a 2 year contract when getting it? $699.
So I ended up paying an extra $100 for the device than if I had just bought it outright.
Even if the offerings/terms are different now... Verizon, regardless of how they market anything, absolutely makes you pay full price (and then some) for the device you get at 'discount.'
It's funny now that we're seeing people being able to BYOD to Verizon these days and AT&T is the one engaging in aggressive whitelisting.
And 10%/yr simple interest is a reasonable price for a retail loan.
Carriers might provide a network unlock -- these are 2 VERY different things.
In many cases you have to get an authorization code from the carrier that sold the device in order to unlock the bootloader. That may or may not involve retrieving a code from your device, and it may or may not also involve interacting with the OEM. It depends on the details negotiated between the carrier and the OEM.
For example, T-Mobile sells devices that are both bootloader and network locked but (for some devices) provides a process to unlock both of those once certain criteria have been met (length of device ownership, account standing, etc). To be perfectly clear, for devices sold by T-Mobile they generally have to authorize you somehow before the OEM will send you a bootloader unlock code.
As long as you buy a Pixel directly from Google or one of a few authorized resellers, it is unlockable. (I recommend B&H, they help you legally evade the sales tax.) You can also use a Pixel you buy from Google with Verizon.