Activation and upgrade fees are pretty much industry standard ... they may be annoying, but its part of the business model.

This past week, I spoke with a phone customer support rep, and questioned the activation fees.  She state that the fees were being used to directly reinvest in their network including their 5G network, so that fee comes back to benefit the customers.  Yeah, I think she went a bit over the top with her explanation, and I don't completely buy into it.  But that is apparently one employees explanation of upgrade and activation fees ...

If we are in a national emergency (which we are!!!), I'd modestly suggest that it would be the "right thing" for carriers to be waiving such extra fees temporarily - when people need phones to be replaced, and they have to buy a device they may never have seen in person before over the Internet, maybe relaxing fees a little bit would be a good community thing to do.  Especially with the in-person retail stores closed in so many placed.  Scale back the upgrade fees (especially when you even downgrading your phone to a lesser device) and the $50 restock fee if the phone you ordered was not what you thought (had you been able to see it in person).