What to Cancel First When You Cut Cable

Cutting cable is rarely one decision. It is a stack of subscriptions that grew one at a time, and the order you unpick them in decides whether it goes smoothly or whether you spend a fortnight annoyed.

The usual mistake is cancelling the big obvious bill first. Do that and you can lose your internet discount, your recordings and your sport in one afternoon.

Here is a better order.

First: write down what you actually pay

Not what you think you pay. Open the statements.

Almost everyone doing this finds at least one thing they had forgotten. A premium channel added for one series that finished two years ago. A sports add-on that renewed in the off-season. A second streaming service somebody signed up for on a free trial.

For each line, write the price, the renewal date and whether you are in contract. The renewal dates matter more than the prices — cancelling the day after a renewal wastes a whole term.

Second: check what is bundled with your internet

This is the step people skip, and it is the expensive one.

Cable companies routinely discount internet on the condition that you also take TV. Cancel the TV and the internet price can jump enough to wipe out the saving. Sometimes it is worse than that: you leave a promotional rate and land on standard pricing.

Call and ask one specific question: what does my internet cost on its own, after I cancel TV? Get the number before you decide anything. Occasionally their answer is good enough that the whole plan changes.

Third: deal with anything under contract

Contracts usually have an early termination fee that falls each month you stay. Find out what yours is and when it ends.

If it expires in two months, waiting two months is normally cheaper than paying the fee. If it has eleven months left, do the arithmetic — the fee against eleven months of a bill you do not want. It is often still worth leaving.

Fourth: sort out sport before anything else

Sport is where cord-cutting plans fall apart, so settle it first.

Work out exactly what you need to watch and when the season starts. Regional sports networks are the usual trap: a local team’s games are often carried on a channel that only one or two services have, and that one channel decides the whole plan.

Once you know sport is handled, everything else is easy. Do it in the other order and you will find out in week one that you cannot watch your team.

Fifth: rescue your recordings

If you have a cable DVR, whatever is on it belongs to the box, and the box goes back.

Watch what you care about, or copy it off if your equipment allows. Then take a photo of your series-record list — it is a surprisingly good reminder of what you actually watch when you are setting up whatever comes next.

Sixth: cancel, and return the hardware properly

Cancel by phone and write down the date, the time and the name of the person you spoke to. Ask for a confirmation number and for written confirmation.

Then return every piece of equipment — boxes, remotes, cables — and keep the receipt. Unreturned-equipment charges appearing weeks later is one of the most common complaints in this whole process, and the receipt is the only thing that settles it.

Last: cancel the leftovers

Now go back to that first list and look at what is left. Once your main viewing is sorted, the streaming service somebody signed up for during one series usually stops earning its place.

A useful habit: cancel it and see whether anyone in the house notices within a month. You can always resubscribe, and most people never do.

A note on the arithmetic

The savings are real, but count honestly. Add up what you will actually be paying afterwards, including any internet increase and anything you keep. If you are replacing six subscriptions with two, count both.

We publish a comparison of a typical US household’s stack against a StreamPlay4K plan using each service’s own advertised prices, so you can see how the sums work rather than take our word for it.