“Also for some absurd reason, T-Mobile lowered the trade-in values of their cell phones.”
Why do you think them making more money is an absurd reasonn? Absurd for whom?
Absurd for THEM. Why? Because if they had a decent trade-in value on the cell phones, I probably would have traded in our cell phones to BUY new cell phones. But without a good trade in value we are better off hanging on to our current cell phones for an extra year or two BEYOND when we were planning to buy new cell phones at the three year mark.