[Troy Tiscareno]

I know two people at my work this has happened to. They did OTA. Their phone pretty much stop working like it used to and in every way is not usable for them. They went to Apple store and magically they walked out with iPhone 7. That's 2 out of 110 people. most of whom uses Android. Probably 60/40 or in this case ~66/44.

That's called "after-sale support". It's likely those people were presented with the choice of: "We'll gladly exchange your used, bricked phone with a refurb of the same model at no cost, or we'll give you a big discount on the latest model for [some $$$ amount]." And no doubt those people chose to take advantage of the discount on the new model - but they could easily have taken the refurb at no cost and been just as good as they were before. That excellent after-sale support is one of the reasons why Apple owns so much of the high-end market and is able to have such high profit margins. No matter how you try, you aren't going to be able to spin that to be a bad thing.