Loophole lets you ditch the carrier faster

If you’re not impressed with Spectrum’s phone service, you don’t necessarily have to stick around for the whole year if you brought your own device. But what if you bought a phone on a payment plan and still have many payments left? Surprisingly, there’s a way out without having to pay off the entire phone: Enter Spectrum’s Anytime Upgrade feature.

For those unfamiliar, all Unlimited Plus plans include Anytime Upgrade. This feature lets you try out a phone and then return it for another if it’s not the right fit. Most of the time this feature is used to actually lock you in longer, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Unlike similar programs from other carriers, you don’t need to pay off a set percentage of the phone’s value first, and there aren’t strict upgrade requirements. As noted over the weekend by Redditor bonchooski, the end result is that there’s a bit of a loophole here that could help you leave Spectrum behind.

Let’s say you were previously packing a Galaxy S25 and still have nearly two years of payments ahead of you. With the Anytime Upgrade, you could simply turn it in and swap it for another. Obviously, the longer you keep the device, the less of a good idea this is but if you are only a few months into a payment plan and are ready to leave Spectrum, you could simply turn in your device for for Spectrum’s cheapest device, the $79.99 TCL Flip 3 and pay it off upfront. In most cases this will be much cheaper than paying off your existing plan, though you’ll have to get a new smartphone at your new phone carrier of choice.

Several other Redditors confirmed this strategy works, but cautioned that the more people use the loophole, the more likely Spectrum is to close it. So if you’re thinking about leaving Spectrum and don’t want to pay off your current device, you might want to act quickly.