← All Georgia benefits
otherstate
Cancelling the Contracts You Cannot Use — Phone, Gym, Television and Internet
Deployment orders let an active duty service member out of a cell phone contract on 30 days’ notice where the posting is outside the provider’s service area. Since 1 July 2019 the same relief reaches a health spa membership, television, video, audio programming and internet access.
Verified August 23, 2026
What this benefit is
Deployment orders let an active duty service member out of a cell phone contract on 30 days’ notice where the posting is outside the provider’s service area. Since 1 July 2019 the same relief reaches a health spa membership, television, video, audio programming and internet access.
What it's worth: Out of a phone, gym, television, audio or internet contract on 30 days’ notice, on deployment orders
- The saving is the remainder of each contract plus whatever early-termination fee it carried. Four contracts of the covered kinds running twelve months apiece is a substantial sum to be paying from a deployment.
- The cell phone route under O.C.G.A. §46-5-8 turns on the deployment being "to a location outside the provider’s service area or outside the continental United States".
- The 2019 extension, House Bill 25, took effect 1 July 2019 and covers a "health spa membership, television, video, audio programming or internet access" contract where the deployment is to a location the provider does not support.
Who is entitled to it
- The termination right is written for the active duty service member.
- Your home is in Georgia.
Not sure whether that describes you?
Answer a few questions about this benefit specifically — we only ask what this one actually depends on, and we stop as soon as we know.
How to claim it
Deadline: 30 days’ notice, given as soon as the orders are in hand- 1List the contracts before you go. The relief covers more than the phone: a health spa membership, television, video, audio programming and internet access are all named.
- 2Check the geography for each one. The phone route asks whether the deployment location is outside the provider’s service area or outside the continental United States; the 2019 extension asks whether the provider supports the location you are going to.
- 3Give 30 days’ notice in writing to each provider separately. One letter to a parent company will not reliably end contracts held with different subsidiaries.
- 4Send the orders with the notice. A provider’s retention desk is entitled to ask for them and will usually not act without them.
- 5Ask for written confirmation that the contract is terminated and that no early-termination fee has been billed, and keep it. Charges appearing after a deployment starts are hard to fight from overseas.
- 6Deal with equipment separately. Ending the contract is not the same as returning a router, a set-top box or a handset, and the provider will still want the hardware back.
- 7If you are told the relief only applies to phones, name the 2019 change: House Bill 25 took effect on 1 July 2019 and added the health spa, television, video, audio programming and internet access contracts.
- Form
- Written notice of termination, with a copy of the deployment orders
- File with
- Each service provider, in writing
- No renewal
- Once granted it does not need renewing.
CorrectionThe gym membership is inside this and it is the one people keep paying. A health spa membership was added by the 2019 change alongside television and internet — a service member who cancels the phone and leaves the gym direct debit running is leaving money on the table for the whole deployment.
Worth knowingThis is not a general right to cancel on any orders. Both routes are tied to where you are going: the phone route to a location outside the provider’s service area or outside the continental United States, the 2019 route to a location the provider does not support. A move within the coverage footprint is a different conversation.
Known gapThe statutory text of O.C.G.A. §46-5-8 and of the 2019 Act was not served to us by an official Georgia host this session — the General Assembly’s site renders its bill pages through a script we could not read. The notice mechanics, any documentary standard and the exact list of covered contract types as codified are recorded as a candidate rather than published here.
Sources
- authority · published policyGeorgia Department of Law, Consumer Protection Division — Military Debt Relief, citing O.C.G.A. §46-5-8 (a service member may "terminate a cell phone service contract with 30 days’ notice" on permanent change-of-station orders, or temporary orders exceeding 60 days, deploying them "to a location outside the provider’s service area or outside the continental United States")
- operating · published policyGeorgia Department of Law, Consumer Protection Division — Military Debt Relief, on House Bill 25 ("Passed by the Georgia Legislature and signed by the Governor, went into effect July 1, 2019. It provides financial relief for active duty members in Georgia by allowing them to terminate contractual obligations with a service provider" for a "health spa membership, television, video, audio programming or internet access" contract on deployment orders to an unsupported location)
This finder provides an informational match, not a government eligibility determination. The responsible agency decides your application.