I personally think a lot of the problem is the average user's interpretation of T-mobile sales reps.
I mean, I knew the S2 had a very large rom community especially because it's a very popular phone. I was led to believe by T-mobile that the phone is pretty much just an S2, but with a smaller size screen.
If you compare the phone's features and specifications, you'd be a fool to not agree.
But as it turns out, as it pertains to roms, nothing could be further from the truth.
Shame on us, the average user, for not realizing the golden rules with salespeople:
1: They'll tell you what you want to hear.
2: Most of the time they don't know what they are talking about anyway.
3: Often times when you need to buy a phone, you've not exactly been planning on it, so you have to do it hastily. This was certainly true for me.
4: Custom roms are of course never able to be supported or recognized by the carriers, they pretty much pretend they don't exist, and for good reason. Most people aren't really careful enough to be doing it, even for the "simple" methods.
5: Rom maker's ability to communicate instructions is not always clear, and yes, this can have a detrimental impact to a person, especially if they are not experienced with the process. Seriously, half of the roms I've looked at for Android phones have glaring instruction errors, and even if it gets pointed out by another person, rather than update their instructions they'll just reply, "Yeah, sorry about that" The problem is, that clarification is often times on the 40th page of the thread. Sigh.
6: And this is my number one reason........
A lot more people should be getting more and more fed up with carriers who impose limitations on phones. Seriously, if it wasn't for all this carrier and manufacturer ego-wagging, the user experience would be better for both the tweaker crowd, and the stock crowd.