A Brief History
In 2019, cutting the cable might have been an exhilarating experience for you, no doubt, but I bet you did not anticipate the costs your over-reliance on the internet service would bring you, right? It hit your pocket with an unpredictable force in the form of those auto-generated bills. So, now, you are looking for a way out.
Houston, we have a problem.
At first, subscribing to the multiple online streaming services, such as Netflix, Hulu, Sling TV, DirecTV Now or PlayStation VUE might have seemed like a wonderful idea, I am sure. Each service offering a multi-channel entertainment vortex, a free-trial opportunity, zero equipment rental fee and none of those unsavory contracts. All the amenities any modern, thrifty consumer would desire. I get it; however, given the recent blows to your budget, you are now forced to search around for that ‘cancel membership’ option, which has not been an easy one to find.
This is where the present article comes in as your knight in shining armor. Read on to find out how you can unhinge yourself from these gargantuan streaming services without having to break a sweat.
Digging Deeper
Amazon Prime
The quickest way to cancel Amazon Prime’s subscription is by going to the amazon.com help page, accessing the ‘Amazon Prime Membership’ menu, and clicking on ‘End Membership’. The longer way would be to open Amazon through the browser, log in, hover over ‘Accounts & Lists’, find ‘Your Prime Membership’, scroll through the benefits you’d be giving up (Prime is adamant in retaining its customers), and ‘End Membership & Benefits’ from there. One tip you need to keep in mind is that Amazon will refund your full membership fee only if you haven’t made any eligible purchases or taken advantage of the Prime benefits since your latest fee charge. This way you’ll not go away empty-handed.
Netflix
The first step to canceling any service is retracing how you first subscribed to it. If you contacted the company directly, then this is what you can do. Turn on your computer, head over to the browser over your reliable Cox internet connection, open the settings of your Netflix account, search for the ‘cancel’ button and click it. Easy, right? However, if you acquired your membership over a third-party channel, like Amazon, Google Play or iTunes, some extra measures will be required. In case of iTunes, go your iPhone’s settings and the main app store. Open your Apple ID, retype the password, scroll to the end of the menu where ‘Subscriptions’ appears, click on it and you’ll find a list. Once there, edit Netflix and ‘cancel’ it. Though this is a remarkably convenient television service, yet its current announcement of price hikes is enough to turn anyone off.
Roku
The best thing about Roku is that you can cancel it directly from your TV, as the streamer will let you do this. Press the ‘Home’ button on the Roku remote, select ‘Manage Subscription’ and cancel it. If you want to remove the paid channels, you can do that from the ‘Channel Store’ list. You can cancel from the browser and the smartphone app too, by signing in to your roku.com account and managing the subscription from there.
Hulu
There are two ways you can go about it. Either you can ‘cancel’ your subscription or ‘delete’ it. Canceling will temporarily disable your service and give you the option of reactivating your account any time you’d want to. Simply head over to hulu.com, log in, select ‘Account’, scroll to the bottom and opt ‘Cancel.’ If you are using android, go to the app to cancel, and in case of iPhone, Apple ID and ‘subscriptions’ menu will take you there. Deleting, however, will completely wipe out any chances of a future resurrection, meaning, you’d have to start from scratch the next time you plan to make an account. For this, go to ‘Account’, select ‘Personal Info.’, choose ‘Update’ and then ‘Delete’.
In case the streamer doesn’t show you the ‘cancel’ option or the streaming service’s site gets too confusing, then you can simply dial in the customer support and terminate your subscriptions from there. Just like the old times. Remain firm, use reason for negotiating and maintain a calm tone.
So, backing out of your ‘cutting the cord’ commitments might take some effort and guts, but it’s totally doable as the aforementioned methods show.
Question for students (and subscribers): What streaming services are you subscribed to? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Eldredge, James. TV Without Cable: Your Complete Guide to Streaming TV & Over-the-Air Free TV. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by Donald Trung Quoc Don (Chữ Hán: 徵國單) of a remote control for a Philips smart TV with a special button for the Netflix streaming service in the Groninger village of Finsterwolde, Oldambt, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.