To play devils advocate, my guess might be that consumers will have to schedule to return hardware or something. But honestly, it’s just so they can bully people when they try to cancel.
The 'hardware' is also $30 crap you can buy off eBay or wholesalers usually. Some of the modern ones even overheat because they are so poorly constructed, lol. I love the little "Designed with ❤️ in Philadelphia. Made in China" tagline on the label with the implied "Overheats in any climate above 40F indoors" just afterwards, lol. Comcast quality.
Since they don't let you to keep the hardware in the case they unsuccessfully bully you to keep the subscription, this is a not a problem, the hardware need to go back in both cases.
The article says, people might accidentally cancel their whole package when they only mean to cancel a single item, or they might cancel a single item and not realize it loses them a bundle discount.
Gosh, maybe the people designing the web UI for the cancellation process for their employer should make it clear exactly what the customer is cancelling so they're not going to make that mistake.