The Easiest Way to Cancel Spectrum Cable with No Hassles

There are dozens and dozens of people on Reddit who have shared the laborious and time-consuming process of canceling their Spectrum cable accounts. There are horror stories about high-pressure sales tactics by “retention specialists” wasting an hour of time on the phone for something that should take five minutes. The experience is apparently so universal that Saturday Night Live even made a skit about it:

So when I had to help my Mom cancel her Spectrum cable account, I was concerned about the prospect of wasting a bunch of time and energy doing it. Happily, I was able to cancel her account quickly by using these steps.

How to Cancel Spectrum (Almost) Painlessly

Here are four steps to cancel Spectrum with the least amount of drama.

1. Cancel in person, not on the phone!

When you try to cancel on the Spectrum website, it says you have to call them. If you do call, it’s two steps. First, you waste time talking to the person on the phone. But you’re not done because you still have to return the equipment. Sure, you can mail it, but I was worried about it getting lost.

I wanted to avoid that, so I just took all of the equipment to a Spectrum store to cancel in person.

Once we spoke to a customer rep at the Spectrum store, he collected our equipment and canceled our service in about three minutes! There was no high-pressure sales spiel because there was a line behind us, and he was too busy to mess around with a retention speech. All he asked was whether we were moving and I just said “no”, with no further questions asked!

It was awesome!

2. Make an appointment using their website!

When we got to the Spectrum store, there were five people in front of us who looked like they had been there for a long time, and only one employee helping customers! We checked in and waited. After about ten minutes, when the line hadn’t moved, I was about to leave to try again some other day, when the employee called us to the front of the line!

It turns out, no one else had made an appointment. Since we did, we went straight to the front of the line ahead of everyone else!

So, don’t just show up at the Spectrum store, make an appointment for Pete’s sake!!!

3. Choose a store that takes equipment exchanges

I don’t know for sure if this makes a difference, but I’m guessing it’s best to go to a Spectrum store that says it takes equipment exchanges.

After you click “Find a Spectrum Store” on the website footer, be sure to first click “Visit store page” before you make an appointment at that store. Under “Store Services”, make sure you see “Equipment Exchange” as one of their services. It would really suck to show up at a store and then not be able to cancel because they don’t take equipment.

4. Make sure you get a receipt!

Finally, don’t leave the store until you get a printed sheet of paper that says you returned the equipment. That way, there will be no disputing whether it was really returned or not!

Conclusion

So yeah, we did have to drive to a Spectrum store in person, and we did have to wait for about ten minutes in line, but overall, the experience of canceling Spectrum cable in person was quite reasonable and painless! I highly recommend it over canceling over the phone.

How was your experience canceling Spectrum cable? If you did it over the phone, was it as bad as the folks say on Reddit? Please leave a comment below! – Brian