Dear Microsoft: Keeping My Subscription is NOT Canceling My Plan. Shame on You.

Microsoft is trying to justify their incredible investment in data centers (and the billions of dollars needed to subsidize the failing OpenAI’s flailing business model) by adding CoPilot features to Microsoft Office apps. I’ve spent the last week toying with CoPilot in Word and Excel.

No specific hot take here. They provide almost no value to me or my workflow. Your mileage may vary.

Of course, getting these AMAZING New features “included” means Microsoft will be increasing the cost of a 365 Family plan from $99.99 a year to $129.99 a year. As I need Office document support for the work I do, and I have a couple family members on this plan for cloud storage, I still feel the Family plan (without AI) is a decent value.

However, for “AI” features that I’m not interested in using or keeping, a cost increase of 30% isn’t something I want to pay for.

Thankfully, on Microsoft’s on blog, they detail there will be a “Classic” plan that users can switch to and keep their older perks and pricing. A handy little link is included that takes you to a Microsoft support page.

I want that. Let’s do that.

It’s when we scroll down to the instructions that things get ugly.

Listed on Microsoft’s own support site, the steps to roll back your new “AI” plan to a “Classic” plan involves clicking on the link that starts the process of canceling your 365 subscription.

I’m positive you can see where I’m going with this.

Microsoft was SO helpful in opting us all in to this new “AI” plan. We all started seeing CoPilot prompts in our Office apps. To start us off on the new “AI” plan, there was no price increase for us paying yearly, but on our next subscription renewal, we’d see a 30% price hike.

Microsoft is sneaking this in on us, hoping we wont notice when the renewal comes. If the advantages of “AI” were clear, and the benefits immediate, a trillion dollar brand like Microsoft wouldn’t need to come at consumers sideways like this.

Worse, they’ve hidden the act of downgrading a plan in the most obtuse fashion they could likely legally get away with. There’s nothing ILLEGAL about doing it this way, but it’s as scummy as they could be and still run clear of (the laughably weak) consumer protections in North America.

We know what this move really is.

An incredible number of subscribers will continue using the apps. An order of magnitude more people will just coast on their subscriptions (or assume this is just a normal price hike) than will rad Microsoft’s blog post. A goodly number are likely already ignoring Microsoft’s marketing emails. I know I missed that message in my email when first looking through this plan change.

Then for the folks who are motivated to look at their plans and spending, it’s likely a significant number of them would never think to “cancel” their subscription to find the options to “downgrade” their plan to a “Classic” account.

With every step of obfuscation, Microsoft is banking on a smaller and smaller niche of a niche of motivated consumer to find the appropriate solution to something that should never have been automatically lumped on their customers. CoPilot features should always be “opt in” not “opt out”.

A reasonable version of this would be to make CoPilot Office features a free demo, and when the customer’s plan is set to renew, it automatically renews with the “Classic” plan, and the subscriber can choose then to pay more for the “AI” plan.

That’s not what Microsoft did of course. They chose the cynical and scummy path to fleece the uneducated, and put up barriers to reasonable education and explanations on how subscriptions work. They know a significant number of exhausted consumers will just move over to the new plans, and then they can claim victories for “AI” adoption.

“Consumer interest in AI has never been higher! In 2025, we moved xx% of our Classic subscribers to new CoPilot plans! AI IS MAKING MORE MONEY!”

It’s now on us geeks to make sure those around us are aware of what their options are, to make sure they aren’t getting charged more for features they might not use, and to help people find reasonable alternatives where those options exist.

I’m very disappointed.

7 Replies to “Dear Microsoft: Keeping My Subscription is NOT Canceling My Plan. Shame on You.”

    1. pointing this out. I will definitely look for my renewal date now. Like you, the classic version has one us over as a family.

  1. These companies claim AI is wonder they have to trick you into paying for it. It doesn’t make sense to many people for daily use.

    1. We’re seeing from international competition now too, that this “need” to spend hundreds of billions on language models is increasingly stupid. What a waste of money and silicon.

  2. I’d just purchased the Military Fam Version of MSO365, X2 in Early Nov… @ $69ea … I am NOT paying a 30% premium for their “MONEY GRAB invention” on something I did just fine WITHOUT for years!!

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