Subscription increase

This is insane. My billing date is in May and I didn't yet received a notice, but going to the subscriptions page shows the price increase.

It's insane, it's idiotic, obvious tool for generating "free" revenue and artificially increase Copilot usage statistics (look how many people subscribed to our Copilot-merged MS365, everybody wants it! yay!).

My subscription was running till late April. When I finally got contact with MS I insisted that I didn't want to wait till late April to cancel before being able to subscribe to a new version of MS365 without Copilot.
They found a way to manually intervene to cancel the past subscription immediately. You have to insist.

There is an option to switch to 'Microsoft 365 Personal Classic' which is the same as 'Microsoft 365 Personal' without the AI features, and will not be subject to the price increase.

This can be done by going to 'cancel subscription' within your account. The option to switch to Personal Classic will then be displayed.

This option was not available to me, I was told this and spent hours troubleshooting with Microsoft support, they said there is some glitch and many customers are experiencing the same and could not access the option to switch to classic and it could only be done via support, yet they still could not switch my subscription, a supervisor intervened as the support person could not help me at all. They said all I can do is turn off my auto renew and contact support again at the time my subscription ends in March, allegedly the team will know how to work around the glitch then... does not leave me with much confidence.....

There is an option to switch to 'Microsoft 365 Personal Classic' which is the same as 'Microsoft 365 Personal' without the AI features, and will not be subject to the price increase.

This can be done by going to 'cancel subscription' within your account. The option to switch to Personal Classic will then be displayed.

By my calculation, my Microsoft 365 subscription will increase by 28% when it next falls due. This is largest increase since 2016 (33.7%) and vastly more than the two roughly 10% increases between 2018 and 2023.

I personally am not interested in the CoPilot AI inclusions, which I currently suppress. I know how to use all the tools in the Office suite without assistance.

I think this increase is out-of-proportion and can't be justified by reason of cost increases and financial pressure. Microsoft is enjoying one of the most prosperous periods in its entire operating history - riding on the back of the change to the subscription model.

Ahead of October, I'll be considering what the consequences of terminating my subscription might be - i.e. do I have to change to another suite of products? Can I live without the online components such as One Drive (which I value)?

I think that Microsoft needs to be held accountable by collective agitation and action from its customer base.

Rick Stocker