Because some companies make it very difficult to cancel out of a contract, like sitting for hours on the phone to speak to a retention specialist who accidentally hangs up the phone.

A lot easier to just stop the payments and stop using the service. 99.99% of companies are not going to sue you over a few hundred dollars for a service you're not even using.

> Because some companies make it very difficult to cancel out of a contract, like sitting for hours on the phone to speak to a retention specialist who accidentally hangs up the phone.

Can you not just give them notice in writing, say by registered post? Or do these contract limit termination so that it must be done over the phone and the contract isn't terminated until the company says it is? And if so, is that even legal?

You are looking for anticipatory repudiation [1]. The Uniform Commercial Code in the U.S. regulates this and says the seller can collect damages as you'd expect. I think if a company tried to say "you can only cancel this contract if you personally serve it to our CEO who by the way is on vacation in the Caribbean so you'll have to fly down there" - that is, making it difficult to notify the seller of repudiation, then the court would probably find that unconscionable. I think as to what forms of notice are appropriate, it's probably instructive to look at related things like due process requirements for notice [2]. As I think about it, the mail system is probably the most standard system for entities (corporations, people, state governments, etc.) to notify each other about things, so just intuitively I would find it hard to believe that a company could get away with refusing a mailed repudiation of contract. I don't think for example you could send your repudiation through Twitter and expect it to be legally binding however. The important part is you put the other party on notice that you have repudiated the contract, and the due process example is interesting because satisfying due process doesn't require "actual notice" [3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticipatory_repudiation

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jones_v._Flowers

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actual_notice

> You are looking for anticipatory repudiation.

I don't think so. I'm looking for straightforward contract termination, and the providing of notice for contract termination, where the contract already explicitly permits termination. I don't think failing to perform on a contract needs to come in to it.

I assume that contracts for services such as electricity and cable already have such termination clauses, so it just a matter of how notice of termination is served.