I Cancelled My Ziggo Subscription After 11 Years. Here Is Exactly What Happened.

A personal account of switching from cable to IPTV in the Netherlands — the good, the confusing, and the part where I realised I had been paying 110 euros a month for television for three years without noticing.

I want to be honest with you about something: I did not cancel my Ziggo subscription because I am particularly tech-savvy or because I spotted an opportunity. I cancelled it because my partner printed out our bank statements from the previous three months and put them on the kitchen table and said, calmly, ‘Can you explain this number to me?’

The number was 109.42 euros. Per month. For television.

I could not explain it in a way that made us feel good about it. So I did what I had been putting off for two years: I started looking at alternatives seriously. This is what I found, and what happened.

How the Bill Got to 109 Euros Without Me Noticing

We had Ziggo from the beginning. Internet and television in a bundle when we moved into our flat in Utrecht in 2013. It was 49 euros a month then, which seemed reasonable for a nice package. Over eleven years, seven price increases, three ‘loyalty offers’ that we accepted because they were easier than cancelling, and a promotional period that I forgot to renegotiate — we had arrived at 109 euros.

Broken down, it was roughly: Ziggo TV Standard at around 42.50 euros, ESPN Compleet at 17.95 (Eredivisie, non-negotiable as far as I was concerned), Ziggo Sport Totaal at 14.95 (Champions League), and a Mediabox rental I had forgotten was even on the bill at around 9 euros. Plus Netflix at 15.99, which I tracked separately in my head.

The problem was not any single line item. Each one seemed defensible in isolation. The problem was the total. 109 euros a month is 1,308 euros a year. Over eleven years, we had paid approximately 10,000 euros for television access.

I genuinely had never calculated that before. It took my partner’s printed bank statement to make it real.

The First Week: Testing Without Committing

I found a service called IP TV Totaal while researching Dutch IPTV options. They offered a 24-hour free trial, which was the only thing that made me willing to try it. I am not adventurous with subscription services. I did not want to cancel Ziggo, test a new service, discover it was bad, and then have to restart Ziggo from scratch. The trial meant I could evaluate without any of that risk.

I ran the trial on a Thursday evening, which turned out to be exactly the right choice. Thursday at 20:00, NPO 1, NOS Journaal. This is when every Dutch IPTV service is simultaneously under peak load. Hundreds of thousands of viewers switching to the news at the same moment. If a service handles that well, it handles everything well.

It handled it well. No buffering. No quality drop. The EPG showed the correct programme at the correct time. I cross-checked it against the NPO website on my phone — titles matched, times matched, in Dutch.

I also tested ESPN 1 during an Eredivisie match. I watched twenty minutes of active play. The stream was smooth during fast sequences, which is where IPTV services typically show their limitations. I opened the stream info in TiviMate (which I had set up on our Fire Stick for the trial) and watched the buffer fill percentage. It stayed above 80% throughout.

By Friday morning I had decided: we were switching.

The Cancellation: Less Drama Than I Expected

I had spent years imagining the Ziggo cancellation as a difficult phone call with a retention specialist who would offer me deals I could not refuse. The actual experience was an online form and a 30-minute wait for a confirmation email.

Ziggo allows cancellation online for their television component while keeping the internet subscription active. I reduced our bundle to internet only, which changed our monthly direct debit from 109 euros to approximately 43 euros. The Mediabox had to be returned at a PostNL point within 30 days.

The internet-only Ziggo price was slightly higher than the bundled TV+internet price had been for internet alone — they adjust the bundle pricing so leaving television increases the internet component. I had calculated this in advance. The net saving was still approximately 60 euros per month.

60 euros per month. 720 euros per year. That is the annual saving from making a decision that took me, from start to finish, about three hours of effort spread over two days.

Month One: What Was Different

The first month felt different in ways I had not anticipated. The most obvious change was the interface — IBO Player on our Samsung television looks different from the Ziggo Mediabox guide. After eleven years, navigating Ziggo’s EPG was automatic. Learning a new interface felt like staying in someone else’s house: everything works, but nothing is where you instinctively reach for it.

By week three, I had configured IBO Player with a favourites group containing the twelve channels we actually watch regularly. Navigation through those twelve channels became as automatic as Ziggo had been. The full channel list with several thousand options sits behind a menu I rarely visit.

What surprised me most: the Eredivisie experience was better. Not the stream quality — that was equivalent. But TiviMate Premium’s multi-view feature, which I had not had on Ziggo, let me watch Ajax and PSV simultaneously during Saturday afternoon simultaneous kickoffs. The specific thing I had been missing for years without realising it was a cable limitation rather than an inherent television limitation.

What was genuinely worse: the catch-up experience for commercial channels. NPO catch-up worked correctly and immediately. RTL and SBS catch-up was inconsistent — some RTL shows were available, some were not, with no obvious pattern. I contacted the provider’s WhatsApp support, received a Dutch response within 90 minutes, and got a clear explanation of which channels have catch-up rights implemented and which do not. Not perfect, but honest.

Month Three: The Test I Had Not Planned

In month three, we had a Ziggo cable outage in our area. Our neighbours with Ziggo lost television for approximately six hours. We noticed because they knocked to ask if our internet was also affected. It was not. Our internet is Ziggo cable too, and it was intermittently affected, but our television — delivered over that same internet connection through a different mechanism — was not affected in the same way.

This was a coincidental resilience test I had not planned for. The IPTV CDN routes streams differently from the cable television signal, so partial cable disruptions that affect the broadcast signal do not always affect IPTV streams. I would not have known this without experiencing it.

Six Months Later: The Honest Assessment

Six months after cancelling Ziggo Television, we have saved approximately 360 euros. The service has had two evenings where streams were briefly lower quality than normal — I assume CDN peak load issues on those specific evenings. Both resolved within 20 minutes. Neither was during the NOS Journaal or a match I cared deeply about. I have not contacted support for a problem, only for the catch-up clarification in month one.

I will not tell you the switch is perfect. I will tell you the switch is significantly better than the alternative we were paying for. The combination of 60 euros per month in savings, a sport experience I prefer for Eredivisie viewing, and adequate Dutch television for daily watching is a combination I cannot construct a reasonable argument against.

My partner has stopped printing bank statements to show me concerning numbers. The television line item now reads approximately 20 euros per month. It is, for the first time in years, a number that I can explain.

If you are at the beginning of this decision and want to IPTV abonnement Kopen without the uncertainty I had, the 24-hour trial eliminates most of it. Test on a Thursday evening from 19:50 to 20:10. Run ESPN 1 during the next Eredivisie match. Those two tests will tell you more about whether the service works for your household than any review, including this one.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does cancelling Ziggo TV affect your Ziggo internet?

No, they are separate services. You can cancel the television component of a Ziggo bundle while keeping the internet. The internet price may increase slightly as a standalone service compared to the bundled rate — calculate the net change before deciding.

What happens to the Ziggo Mediabox?

You return it. The Mediabox is rental hardware. Take it to any PostNL point within 30 days of cancellation with the return form Ziggo sends. It takes five minutes. You stop paying the 8-10 euro monthly rental from the next billing cycle.

Is the EPG really equivalent to Ziggo’s?

For Dutch public channels — NPO 1-3, all regional omroepen — yes. The EPG data is accurate and updated correctly. For commercial channels (RTL, SBS) and sport channels (ESPN, Ziggo Sport), quality is provider-dependent. A legitimate provider with properly integrated Dutch EPG data shows accurate times and programme titles. Verify this during the trial by cross-referencing with the NPO website.

What if the service becomes unreliable after you subscribe?

Dutch consumer law gives you a 14-day herroepingsrecht (cooling-off period) for online subscriptions. After the initial period, month-to-month plans allow cancellation with one month’s notice. You are never locked in for a year unless you have chosen an annual plan. The exit risk is low.

Do you miss anything about Ziggo?

Honestly, the muscle memory for the interface took longer than I expected to replace. The Ziggo Mediabox remote and its button layout was automatic after eleven years. Learning IBO Player navigation on the Samsung remote took about three weeks to feel natural. That is the whole list.

Personal account reflects one household’s experience in Utrecht in 2025-2026. Individual experiences vary. Pricing figures reflect publicly advertised rates as of April 2026.