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The carrier offers something to entice you to join them so that they can then sell their service to you and profit from that. They also provide a trial/return period as part of that. They aren't losing out on not making as much as they can from the trade-in, while you are losing out on a whole device if you don't end up going with them during the trial period.

Well, the "it's a contract" part has been addressed a few times in this thread, along with the other part about it all.
Well if it's all been addressed, maybe time to shut this thread down. Sorry for the redundancy.
 
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