I got scammed on a refurbished iPhone and it was probably net good for me

Heads up in advance: I don't know what the moral of this story is, or whether it's worth reading for most people, but sharing this anyway in case it helps anyone. In order not to clickbait you, I'll say upfront that the reason for the net-goodness is just that I'm a phone addict, so having my phone break and become unusable for a time was probably good for my brain.

Ok, so, there were two reasons I bought a refurbished iPhone in the first place:

1) As a young bundle of atoms I made the mistake of reading a lot of pop econ books, and one of the things I internalized was that people irrationally optimize for saving money on small purchases ("which of these tins of tomato should I get, this one looks better but is $1 more!") and then end up spending huge amounts when making expensive purchases because they've already anchored on a high number so what's another $100 (or three).

2) I really, really like being able to hold my phone in one hand; for me, the iPhone SE (4.7" screen) was the perfect form factor, but Apple decided to discontinue that whole lineage in 2022, and then also the the line of the 5.4" 13mini in 2023. I'm not at all an Apple loyalist, but the situation for Androids is roughly the same: big-phone enjoyers might not realise how difficult it is to get any modern phone smaller than 6".

I was pretty unsure about this decision, because part of me thought that the peace of mind of buying a brand-new phone would be worth the extra cost, but my inability to buy a small phone from any marquee brand pushed me to take a risk on a refurbished 13mini.

I inevitably spent way too much time looking at options – the internet is full of I Bought A Refurbished Phone And My Face Got Eaten By A Bear stories – but I figured that was selection bias. One great thing about buying a new phone direct from a marquee brand is that it reduces decision fatigue, because at least you know where you're buying it from, but second hand doesn't have this advantage and the internet is also full of I Bought A Phone From [Name Of Second Hand Market Place] And Got Eaten By A Bear, Again stories.

After (again) wasting an irrational amount of time on research, I eventually went with a phone seller called Nexus Tech Solutions with a 5* physical location on googlemaps and who actually answered his phone and gave reasonable explanations to all questions.

For the first ~2 months everything was dandy and I thought I'd won this particular gamble. Then – as I'm wont to do – I dropped the phone on the floor, and the back smashed off completely. Reading about this online, I saw that a lot of people claimed that Original Apple Glass (TM) is designed not to crack that way, and it's mainly an issue with refurbished glass. The guy in Texas insisted the glass was original, and that he would replace it for me at a discount, but since the cost of repair was almost half the cost of the phone I figured it wasn't worth it. Somewhat miraculously, the phone kept working with only a cheap plastic Phone Back Protector to cover its innards.

A month later, my phone suddenly stopped being able to send or receive calls. There followed a truly incredible series of interactions with my carrier (T-Mobile) via their chat support that always went like
me: I am unable to receive or make calls
them: I'm sorry to hear that! I am calling you now to help out
me: I'm afraid that won't work, because the issue is precisely my inability to make or receive calls
them: I'm sorry to hear that! I have tried calling you and received your voicemail: can you please call us back?
me: I would dearly love to be able to do that, but as immediately just now mentioned, that is precisely the thing I cannot do

I eventually elliott.org-ed my way out of the problem and got T-Mobile's premium support, who told me that my phone had been excommunicated by its original carrier. They unfortunately could not tell me who the original carrier was, making it impossible for me to do anything about it.

As best I can tell, the likely situation is that my phone's original owner had bought it on credit and stopped paying, and ~6 months later the original network had therefore cut off the phone. Everything except the calling/texts still work fine, so e.g. I can use it on wifi for whatsapping and as an audiobook player, which is honestly not nothing but does not span the entirety of my telephonic needs.

The aforementioned Dylan at Nexus Tech, who had previously been so responsive, alas now ghosted me completely. Which I suppose, at least, is in fine phone-related tradition.

Anyway. I ordered a Unihertz Jelly Phone online, a conceptually-cool tiny android phone which unfortunately never arrived, one of the other qualities I generally appreciate in a phone, and whose manufacturer unfortunately refused to refund it for weeks after their mail carrier started showing DAMAGED: CONTACT SENDER. Eventually my loved one gave me a perfectly-functioning but for-me-large flagship Android, which has stayed with me to this day.

The silver lining of all this, as mentioned, was that I ended up spending a ~month without a functioning phone in the outside world: I basically just had to do stuff at home on wifi, and then commute etc phonelessly until I reached another wifi location. I was in an unusually deep phone-addiction hole at the time, and this inconvenience jammed me out of it, which was great. But it's hard to suppress the feeling that if a broken product is net-good for your life because it derails your addiction to said product, something is going really wrong for you in a way that's gone from "haha I'm soooo addicted to X" to "no really, I am addicted," hahalessly.