Why has there been a 50% increasing the price of Microsoft 365 Personal? This is an extraordinary increase and unaffordable for most people .

The link I had posted just above your reply here was what I followed. Classic was absolutely the option there, I switched with no issues. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/switching-to-microsoft-365-personal-and-family-classic-plans-58342e83-38e7-4cda-b63b-88604a8fb7ef

I did - agent had nothing at all about classic plan for me. Wasn't until I googled it that I found the official microsoft page about it, and once I selected "cancel" the classic plan for 69.99 was an option. So thanks, helped me find what I needed.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/switching-to-microsoft-365-personal-and-family-classic-plans-58342e83-38e7-4cda-b63b-88604a8fb7ef

I am happy to announce that I have found a work-around; but it takes time.

I agree that the price increase is absolutely unnecessary, especially because MS decided to include Copilot in its Desktop apps.

So it would seem that they are effectively forcing users to pay for the copilot feature - which I do not use, at all.

If you do use copilot in Desktop apps, then you can stop reading my reply.

I found that Microsoft 365 Personal/Family Classic plans are still priced at the same pricing in my country, South Africa.

These are the steps that I followed in order to get rid of the price increase & copilot, because I couldn't "downgrade" to the classic plan.
Go to the MS Site Plans site & open the blue "Questions? Talk to an expert" button in the bottom right corner of the screen.

Wait for the Chatbot & select "Start", wait again for the response and select "Purchase/Renew". The chatbot will then transfer you to an agent. You will then need to explain to the MS Agent that you "Do not appreciate the price increase & would like to switch to the Microsoft 365 Personal/Family Classic plan since the option is difficult to find" (I could not find it for the life of me".

The agent that assisted me was very helpful. However I did hit a snag when they picked up that my subscription was still valid under Google play, I did cancel it through there 2 hours prior.

I then advised the agent that I will wait for the Google play subscription to end at the next billing cycle and that I will go through these steps again after it had cancelled.

I hope this helps anyone in the same boat as me.

Nice try MSFT, trying to make it sound like people with the 365 personal or family could somehow opt out of the more expensive **** with AI that we don't need to a more normal version. There IS no option even for my 365 personal. It jumps from 69.99 to 99.99 a year because of all this $h1t that I have no desire to get.

I would've just bought a cheap license for perpetual office but I'm using Onedrive, so just getting the 1TB of one drive alone is more expensive than even the office/onedrive personal bundle now.

Definitely time to look at all the other cloud storage options to keep files synced between my two laptops and desktop.

I got notification today. Total B/S, as if these people are not rich enough. I wont be paying it, hopefully if enough people go elsewhere MS will get the message!