But the reality is that people who don't pay their phone contract tend to be the kinds of people who just ignore collections anyways and have a bad credit score to begin with.
That's the problem with small debts, and why phone locking was a clever solution -- if the phone becomes useless when you stop paying, people will actually pay it off when they wouldn't have before.
If they already have a bad credit score, then the carrier giving them an expensive phone without upfront payment is kinda on the carrier.
I think there's probably a significant net benefit to society from forcing carriers to unlock phones by default. If you're overseas, or need to temporarily use another carrier - you can.
If a carrier is not willing to carry the risk that someone who has bad credit might break the contract for an expensive phone - then I think perhaps that's not such a bad thing.
That's the problem with small debts, and why phone locking was a clever solution -- if the phone becomes useless when you stop paying, people will actually pay it off when they wouldn't have before.