The ACCC has commenced proceedings in the Federal Court against Microsoft Australia and its US-based parent company Microsoft Corporation for allegedly misleading approximately 2.7 million Australian…
The ACCC has commenced proceedings in the Federal Court against Microsoft Australia and its parent company Microsoft Corporation for allegedly misleading approximately 2.7 million Australian customers when communicating subscription options and price increases, after it integrated its AI assistant, Copilot, into Microsoft 365 plans.
The ACCC alleges that since 31 October 2024, Microsoft has told subscribers of Microsoft 365 Personal and Family plans with auto-renewal enabled that to maintain their subscription they must accept the integration of Copilot and pay higher prices for their plan, or, alternatively, cancel their subscription.
The ACCC alleges this information provided to subscribers was false or misleading because there was an undisclosed third option, the Microsoft 365 Personal or Family Classic plans, which allowed subscribers to retain the features of their existing plan, without Copilot, at the previous lower price.
Microsoft’s communication with subscribers did not refer to the existence of the “Classic” plans, and the only way subscribers could access them was to begin the process of cancelling their subscription. This involved navigating to the subscriptions section of their Microsoft account and selecting “Cancel subscription”. It was only on the following page that subscribers were given the option to instead move to the Classic plan. See a screenshot of the cancellation page revealing the Classic plan.
“Following a detailed investigation, we will allege in Court that Microsoft deliberately omitted reference to the Classic plans in its communications and concealed their existence until after subscribers initiated the cancellation process to increase the number of consumers on more expensive Copilot-integrated plans,” ACCC Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb said.
“The Microsoft Office apps included in 365 subscriptions are essential in many people’s lives and given there are limited substitutes to the bundled package, cancelling the subscription is a decision many would not make lightly.”
“We’re concerned that Microsoft’s communications denied its customers the opportunity to make informed decisions about their subscription options, which included the possibility of retaining all the features of their existing plan without Copilot and at the lower price,” Ms Cass-Gottlieb said.
“We believe many Microsoft 365 customers would have opted for the Classic plan had they been aware of all the available options.”
Following the integration of Copilot, the annual subscription price of the Microsoft 365 Personal plan increased by 45 per cent from $109 to $159. The annual subscription price for the Microsoft 365 Family plan increased by 29 per cent from $139 to $179.
Microsoft sent two emails and published a blog post to inform auto-renewing subscribers (as of 31 October 2024) about the Copilot integration and the impending price increase that would apply at their next renewal. These three pieces of communication are central to the ACCC’s case.
“We allege that Microsoft’s two emails to existing subscribers and the blog post were false or misleading as they conveyed that consumers had to accept the more expensive Copilot-integrated plans, and that the only other option was to cancel,” Ms Cass-Gottlieb said.
“All businesses need to provide accurate information about their services and prices. Failure to do so risks breaching the Australian Consumer Law,” Ms Cass-Gottlieb said.
In establishing its investigation into this matter, the ACCC drew on a significant number of consumer reports, as well as commentary in online forums such as Reddit. Information provided by consumers to the ACCC’s Infocentre was critical to alerting the ACCC to the alleged conduct, particularly in identifying the availability of the Classic plan through subscribers’ cancellation flows.
The ACCC is seeking orders including penalties, injunctions, declarations, consumer redress, and costs.
Consumer response
The ACCC believes the millions of Australian consumers who were allegedly misled by Microsoft about the availability of the Classic plan may have suffered economic harm through the automatic renewal of their subscription with Copilot integration at a higher price.
The ACCC is seeking consumer redress in this case for Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscribers affected by the alleged conduct.
Existing Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscribers who have not had their subscription renewed since 8 July 2025 and would like to revert to their previous plan may be able to select the cancel option and follow the steps in the cancellation process until the Classic plan is offered. However, the ACCC notes that the subscription options and prices offered are entirely in Microsoft’s control and could be subject to change at any time.
Example timeline for a subscriber on a Microsoft 365 Personal plan
- On 19 April 2024, a consumer purchased an annual Microsoft 365 Personal subscription for $109 and enabled auto-renewal for one year’s time.
- On 31 October 2024, Microsoft published a blog post in which it stated:
- “To reflect the value we’ve added over the past decade and enable us to deliver new innovations for years to come, we’re increasing the prices of Microsoft 365 Personal and Family. The price increase will apply to existing subscribers upon their next renewal.”
- On 9 January 2025, the consumer received an email informing them that AI features were being added to their plan and the price of the annual subscription would increase from $109 to $159 starting on 19 April 2025. See a screenshot of the first email sent to the consumers about the price increase.
- On 13 April 2025, 7 days before their renewal date, the consumer received a second email in which Microsoft stated:
- “We want to let you know about a change to the amount of your next payment. Unless you cancel two days before Saturday, April 19 2025, we’ll charge AUD 159.00 including taxes every year… We’ll tell you if this price ever changes. Cancel any time to stop future charges or change how you pay by managing your subscription in your Microsoft account.”
- On 19 April 2025, the consumer's subscription was automatically renewed at the increased price of $159. The consumer was not aware that switching to the Classic plan at the existing subscription price of $109 was possible.
Screenshots showing the communications with subscribers
Email sent to subscribers informing them of the Copilot integration and price increase
The page late in the cancellation process revealing the Classic plan
A subscriber only saw this screen once they had navigated to the subscriptions section of their Microsoft account, selected “Cancel subscription”, and continued with the cancellation process.
Background
Microsoft Pty Ltd (Microsoft AU) is an Australian proprietary company, and a wholly owned subsidiary of the Microsoft Corporation (Microsoft US), a US-based technology conglomerate. Microsoft AU is the supplier of Microsoft’s proprietary software in Australia, including Microsoft 365 plans.
The ACCC alleges Microsoft US was responsible for preparing and publishing the communications to Australian Microsoft 365 subscribers containing the misrepresentations alleged by the ACCC. The ACCC alleges that Microsoft AU adopted the communications as the seller of Microsoft 365 subscriptions to Australian consumers.
The ACCC’s case only relates to Microsoft 365 Personal and Family plans, which are designed for home use. The case does not involve Microsoft 365 subscriptions for business or enterprise.
Microsoft 365 Personal and Family offerings are supplied on a monthly or annual subscription basis, and are comprised of:
- software products, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote
- collaboration and communication applications like Outlook, Teams and SharePoint
- cloud-based services through OneDrive.
Microsoft launched Copilot as its consumer-facing generative AI product in 2023. Copilot was integrated into Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscriptions in Australia on 31 October 2024.
In January 2025, the Copilot integration was rolled out across Microsoft 365 worldwide, with varying subscription price increases applying to each jurisdiction.
Competition, product safety, consumer and fair trading issues in the digital economy is a current ACCC compliance and enforcement priority.
Maximum penalties
For corporations, the maximum penalty for each breach of the Australian Consumer Law is the greater of:
- $50 million
- three times the total benefits that have been obtained and are reasonably attributable, or
- if the total value of the benefits cannot be determined, 30 per cent of the corporation’s adjusted turnover during the breach turnover period.
Any penalty that might apply to this conduct is a matter for the Court to determine and would depend on the Court’s findings. The ACCC will not comment on what penalties the Court may impose.
Concise statement
ACCC v Microsoft Concise Statement 27 October 2025 ( PDF 1.6 MB )
This document contains the ACCC’s initiating court documents in relation to this matter. We will not be uploading further documents in the event these initial documents are subsequently amended.
Read the original article
Comments
They have switched people to the plan with Copilot in the US too. I just checked and next renewal is set for the $99 plan with Copilot instead of the $69 plan I had been on.
I remember some email from them saying the Copilot was now on my plan, but I don't recall anything saying that this was actually a different, more expansive plan, or that Copilot was just a trial and the plan would switch until I took action, or anything like that.
Here's how to get back to your old plan:
• find the Services & Subscriptions page on your account and select Manage.
• click "Cancel Subscription".
• On the page that brings up there will be an option to switch to a different plan. That should have the "Personal Classic" plan. There's also "Family Classic" for people that want the family plan without Copilot.
Another way that some have reported works is to simply turn off recurring billing. That then sometimes triggers an offer to switch plans that includes the Classic plans.
By EvanAnderson 2025-10-2717:491 reply Thank you. This workflow worked for my US account just fine, though my account just said "Subscriptions" rather "Services & Subscriptions".
My plan renewed back in May at the new rate. Microsoft did not advertise that there was any way to remain with the "Classic" plan. I've also never used the Copilot "features". I'd absolutely sign-on to a class action suit to get some money back. Even if it ends up just enriching the attorneys (which class actions inevitably do) Microsoft needs as much "correction" about this behavior as possible.
> Microsoft did not advertise that there was any way to remain with the "Classic" plan
Months before the pricing change went into effect Microsoft sent me a detailed email about how to stay on the old pricing plan.
I don't appreciate being auto migrated, but they did originally provide instructions on how to not be migrated.
By EvanAnderson 2025-10-2815:251 reply I'd love to see that email. I received no such email and no instructions about how not to be migrated.
My plan renewed on 2025-05-04. On 2025-04-04 I received an email w/ the subject line "Upcoming Microsoft 365 price change". This email stated:
> Thank you for being a valued Microsoft 365 subscriber. To reflect the value we’ve added over the past decade, address rising costs, and enable us to continue delivering new innovations, we’re increasing the price of your subscription.
> Effective February 14, 2025, the price for Microsoft 365 Family subscriptions will increase from USD 99.99* per year to USD 129.99* per year. To continue with the new price, no action is needed—your payment method on file will be automatically charged. To make changes to your subscription plan or turn off recurring billing, visit your Microsoft account at least two days before your next billing date.
> By maintaining your subscription, you’ll enjoy secure cloud storage, advanced security for your data and devices, and cutting-edge AI-powered features, along with all your other subscription benefits. Thank you for choosing Microsoft.
> Learn more about how to manage your subscription, including how to cancel and switch your subscription.
> * Subscription prices listed do not include any discounts, promotions, or special offers that may be available.
The phrases "Microsoft Account", "subscription benefits", "how to cancel", and "switch your subscription" were all links to the same page. Those links redirect to here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/microsoft-365-...
I don't have an archive of the page as it appeared on 2025-04-04. Right now it makes mention of the Microsoft 365 Family "Classic" plan at the old $99 rate.
My recollection is that the page, as of 2025-04-04, also made no mention of the "Classic" plan, and offered no instructions re: not being "upgraded".
By com2kid 2025-10-2912:18 I am subscribed through Google play store, so there is a chance the form letter was different.
By adrr 2025-10-2717:58 At least they are putting the linkedin product people to good use.
Yes, it was infuriating.
In addition to the Classic option that is shown only after hitting "Cancel", they also had a secret "Microsoft 365 Basic" option for $20/year. It includes no Office products, but provides 100 GB of OneDrive. Which is all I needed. So Microsoft is getting $20/year from me that they don't deserve.
Why do I pay them even $20/year? It's insurance against the same kind of BS from Google. I back up my Google Drive to OneDrive.
By A1kmm 2025-10-2810:46 For only 100 GB, that's quite expensive storage. Compare for example Backblaze B2 at $7.20 / year / 100 GB. That is just the storage, so if you do lots of I/O it might increase - but if you aren't using exactly 100 GB and don't do much IO it might also be less than $7.20.
By Benedicht 2025-10-2723:18 I remember this trick. Wanted to go back to family classic, but it wasn't there so I just continued with the cancellation instead.
By deepspace 2025-10-2720:32 I tried this and the only options I got were CAD 101 for the family subscription with AI and CAD 109 for the Classic one without AI ! ?
Just another heads up - I switched to Family Classic and when it renewed it dropped all access to my family members. I wasn't aware it would do that and had a family member unable to use their "full" email account until I had worked it out and was able to re-link them.
By EvanAnderson 2025-10-2723:491 reply Oh, hell. I just made this change this afternoon.
If you don't mind me asking, how long was it from switching until this happened?
By johnmw 2025-10-295:48 I changed the plan type some time ago and it happened when my existing subscription expired and it automatically switched over.
I'm afraid I wasn't paying close attention so only know it happened around the same day. If you have already switched over to Classic and have had no problems then hopefully the issue has been fixed.
By thehoff 2025-10-2716:57 Thanks, just did this on our family plan.
By inquirerGeneral 2025-10-2717:45 They also added more to the 365 Family Manager family premium plan though -- they ended Copilot Pro as that was an add-on that made no sense when people already had to juggle the other two copilots that are finally "settling in".
Good move there, at least.
> https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nickdc_copilot-pro-is-no-more...
> https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nickdc_copilot-pro-is-no-more...
It should not be normal that companies are trying to fool their customers. I may be wrong, but I feel that dark patterns have gotten worse and have become quite normalised.
I'm well aware that companies are not your friends, and they are only in it to earn as much money as possible etc. But in the ideal world it should never be a consideration to willingly deceive your customers. Then something is wrong that needs fixing.
By thewebguyd 2025-10-2716:146 reply You can thank Friedman for that with the whole "The social responsibility of business is to increase profits" mindset and the Dodge vs. Ford court case that ruled Ford had to operate his company in the interests of its shareholders above all else.
We need to end shareholder primacy and have stronger antitrust enforcement.
By AnthonyMouse 2025-10-2720:511 reply > the Dodge vs. Ford court case that ruled Ford had to operate his company in the interests of its shareholders above all else.
That case is from 1919 and it doesn't say what most people think it says.
The problem there was that Ford was trying to claim he could do whatever he wants because he has the most votes, minority shareholders be damned. In practice what companies do now is that they do whatever they want and come up with some explanation for why it's in the interest of the shareholders, e.g. charitable donations are tax deductions and strengthen the company's brand with customers, instead of explicitly telling the other shareholders to eat sand.
The real problem with modern companies is diffuse ownership. You invest your retirement money in some fund, the fund is the thing that actually elects the board and what the fund wants is to increase profits, and typically short-term profits at that, so they elect a board to do it and that's what happens. It's not because the law requires them to do that, it's because that's the result of that incentive structure. And then all the companies that you own as a shareholder are out there screwing you over by double when you're their customer.
Whereas if you have a company owned and operated by the same people, then they can say "hey wait a minute, this is only going to increase short-term profits by a small amount and it's going to make everyone hate us, maybe we shouldn't do it?" Which is the thing that's missing from large publicly-traded companies.
> stronger antitrust enforcement
This is the other thing that's missing. Even if companies are trying to screw you, if they have a lot of competition then they can't, because you'd just switch to one that isn't. But now try that in a market where there are only two incumbents and they're both content to pick your pocket as long as the other one is doing the same.
By like_any_other 2025-10-2812:231 reply > The real problem with modern companies is diffuse ownership.
And inheritance taxes and the hate directed at billionaires [1] make any other kind of ownership a rare exception. So every company is headed not by a person with a goal and a conscience, but an amoral board that can agree on only one thing - make more money.
[1] Not specific bad things specific billionaires have done, but their existence in general.
The hate against billionaires wasn't nearly as staunch even a decade ago, let alone two or three. This has nothing to do with the reason why things ended up this way.
By AnthonyMouse 2025-10-299:36 The billionaires thing really has the causation reversed. What made people into billionaires? They were the early shareholders of companies that became megacorps. So what caused those companies to become megacorps, instead of developing into competitive markets?
By themafia 2025-10-2719:30 Friedman told people what they wanted to hear.
Unsurprisingly Friedman was lauded and rewarded for this behavior.
By itopaloglu83 2025-10-2719:072 reply Leaving the markets uncontrolled is the problem. Fine the hell of them for acting anti-consumer and they will quickly align themselves with the realities.
By kevin_thibedeau 2025-10-2720:13 The interests of the shareholders doesn't mean extract all profit immediately.
By deaux 2025-10-2817:55 This is ironic as it's the perpetuating of this myth by people like you that sustains this mindset. And I get that you're not intentionally doing it at all, it comes from a place of misunderstanding. But it's incredibly harmful.
To be very clear:
Companies absolutely do not have any responsibility to maximize short-term profit.
They have a responsibility to not actively and intentionally destroy the company, and to not use the company's resources for purely personal gain in a way unrelated to the company.
That's it.
This is also why you never hear about any company getting sued for anything related to this (let alone succesfully). Because it doesn't happen, as it's not a thing and any lawyer would immediately tell you you don't have a case.
By alex1138 2025-10-2715:42 There's no accountability either on a liability - legal, prison - level or a personal duty to make sure you Do The Right Thing (when, of course, you have a family to feed)
Behavior like what some of the tech giants do (and I don't crusade against "big tech" but individual cases are ridiculous) wouldn't be justified if you, like, wrote it down on a piece of paper and showed it to them, but they get away with it because you can just ignore all feedback, you don't have to actually answer support tickets from a distance of potentially hundreds of miles away (if you acted like that to my face, well, you wouldn't dare)
Some are worse than others; some legitimately just do not care how much evil they're pumping out into the world (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1692122 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42651178)
By zerosizedweasle 2025-10-2715:363 reply If your product is this bad and no one wants to buy it normally, maybe you should build a new product.
By estimator7292 2025-10-2715:402 reply But it's so much more profitable for shareholders to force users to engage with the shitty product
By givemeethekeys 2025-10-2715:541 reply It's much cheaper for execs to buy bundled "it can do everything for less!" junk for the peasants.
That and, they're paying for Excel anyway...
By cogman10 2025-10-2716:23 Literally the exact reason we ended up with MS teams instead of slack.
By wat10000 2025-10-2716:44 Even if you have a great product, you'll still get more money out of people if you apply some dark patterns like this. It's very hard for a company to resist that siren call.
By RoyTyrell 2025-10-2815:54 Yea but Satya bet a lot of the company on AI, and if it fails he's fucked as CEO. So he's going to make damn well sure he's shoved AI down everyone's throats as much as possible, even if it alienates some percentage of their customer base.
By vjvjvjvjghv 2025-10-2719:27 Making new products is very hard. Just look at the innovation output of the tech giants. Compared to the resources they have it’s pretty pathetic. They are simply out of ideas.
By giancarlostoro 2025-10-2717:22 I call it Marketing Driven development. Its also responsible for a drop in higher quality software as business people have to justify their jobs and push developers off maintenance tickets that are “low priority” items but still impact enough customers that it should be embarrassing.
Welcome to 2025 - Cyberpunk without the cool aesthetics but all the downsides.
I realised the last time I was in a major city (I live in a village) at night just how close we are, ebikes wizzing around with youngish adults wearing corporate logos all over themselves while using e-cigs, gangs of others waiting outside each restaurant for a pickup.
Straight out the opening of Snowcrash but without the cool car.
We really did invent Torment Nexus from the classic cautionary tale "Don't Create The Torment Nexus".
I love computers, I love programming (and have for 35 years), I really really am coming to detest larger and larger parts of the modern tech scene - consumer tech and the Microsoft/Meta/Googles of the world.
The things companies can get away with in America is insane. Amazon really feels like Weyland-Yutani.
I'm not in the U. S. but when I tried to cancel my Bitdefender subscription last week (substituted Windows with Linux) - surprise: there isn't a Cancel Option anywhere on my account pages. No chatbot, no e-mail address, no phone number. I opened a ticket with them and the answer I got was: cancel via snail mail with the service provider. I live in a 11th century 200 inhabitants village and the next post office is 10 km away.
These practises have got to stop. We've got to regulate this away, it's borderline fraud.
By RoyTyrell 2025-10-2816:05 Assuming it's credit card, file a complaint with your credit card company and do a chargeback - or request a new cc number such that the old one is retired. If you have to justify it with the bank, just tell them Bitdefender has no process for canceling a subscription once started. If they press further, or get pushback from Bitdefender, tell them the customer service rep suggested trying to send a letter to see if that might work.
By noir_lord 2025-10-2720:23 I'm not in the US so I suspect some of it is slightly blunted by generally stronger worker protections but Amazon has had multiple issues here as well and we still have the "gig economy" stuff just the same.
It's not a good direction things are trending.
We thought computers were different. That freedom of information would throw off the shackles of the old order and usher in a new era of human flourishing.
Turns out computers weren't different at all, they just hadn't caught the full attention of government and business yet.
By matheusmoreira 2025-10-2717:35 I think I became depressed because of this. I used to be so enthusiastic about computers. We had the freedom to do anything we wanted. Now they're locking everything down, destroying everything the word "hacker" ever stood for. I'm watching it happen in real time. It's heart breaking.
Computers are world changing technology. They are so powerful they could defeat police, judges, governments, militaries. Left unchecked, they could wipe out entire segments of the global economy. They could literally reshape the world. The powers that be cannot tolerate it.
By tremon 2025-10-2717:46 Computers are different, because of zero-cost copying. It's much easier to achieve a digital monopoly than with physical-world products. That should also mean that antitrust enforcement should be stronger on software companies, and the scope of enforcement should be broader.
By IT4MD 2025-10-2717:00 [dead]
By matheusmoreira 2025-10-2717:551 reply So when is Johnny Silverhand gonna show up? He's over two years late by now...
By natebc 2025-10-2720:13 The other Cyberpunk. Not that it's any better but we for sure won't have Judy there to save our asses.
By noir_lord 2025-10-2716:23 If anything we'd be more likely to open a portal to hell for Argent Energy.
`Meta today announced a strategic partnership with Union Aerospace Corporation - the deal will give Meta access to UAC's energy network powering the next revolution in AI.`
By tsunamifury 2025-10-2715:482 reply Uber, Airbnb and DoorDash are the primary dark pattern users in the industry.
I am an executive design leader and all hires from these three companies are screened in detail about their honesty level in their designs due to how many issues I have with these companies training their workers to lie.
If you work for them know that it’s a black mark on your record.
I have hired two from these companies who literally opened the interview with “I want to leave X because they literally are lying”
By netsharc 2025-10-280:50 Considering their business model is exploitation of regulations (for hotels, for employment), no wonder they're using dark patterns too.
And it seems other companies see them and think "hey, can we do that as well?" (Like the issue of this article...)
Meta with its exploiting of children's (and adults') insecurities is probably worse though.
By kenjackson 2025-10-2718:311 reply What are examples of their lies?
By tsunamifury 2025-10-283:25 Progressive anti disclosure in prices and fees.
Full on fraudulent display of prices then charging another price.
Hiding service/worker fee splits
Global predatory pricing
Blatantly false forecasting revenues to businesses or workers.
And much more.
These are all active UX designs I have seen presented.
> and have become quite normalised.
Enforcement agencies are asleep at the switch. Without any pressure to constrain them then these major corporations will stop at nothing.
> it should never be a consideration to willingly deceive your customers.
They don't see it that way. They just see it as a new profit stream that they're daring enough to capture.
By Yeul 2025-10-2811:57 Windows 11 OneDrive that just decides to backup files without consent was certainly daring.
Look I am computer savvy enough to "fix" Windows I can live with it but I advised my mom to get an Apple laptop.
By watwut 2025-10-2813:19 > Enforcement agencies are asleep at the switch.
They are not asleep. They were intentionally weakened, step by step.
By netsharc 2025-10-280:44 Isn't it amazing that big corp is like the stereotypical rug salesman now...
I suppose since they're (they being Amazon, Meta, Google, Microsoft) helping pay for a ballroom for the biggest rug conman..
By vjvjvjvjghv 2025-10-2719:26 There aren’t enough opportunities to make the profits they need to keep the stock price up in an ethical manner. So they have to use dark patterns. It will keep getting worse with these trillion dollar behemoths having to maintain their growth rates. Ads everywhere. AI will become more and more of a tool for manipulation.
By stevenkkim 2025-10-2717:283 reply This happened to me in the U.S. too. Family plan went from $99/yr to $129/yr. I was going to just going to resentfully accept this, when I just got annoyed and said, "you know what? we don't use word and excel enough to justify this and there are definitely alternatives." Only when I went to cancel did I find out that they tried to force me onto the $129 "with AI" plan (who actually thinks AI features are worth anything? I've never used them in office or really any MS product) and that the "without AI" plan is still $99.
I decided to cancel anyway because I was still resentful.
Thing is, either $99 or $129 for the Family plan is actually quite reasonable, our family has 5 users. I just don't like giving money to deceitful or disrespectful companies.
If Microsoft had just kept the pricing the same as they had for many years, I almost certainly would have re-subscribed.
By jay_kyburz 2025-10-2719:431 reply I had to update my credit card details on Dropbox, but the website it so badly designed, I almost just canceled. I'm not sure if its dark patterns or incompetence.
I _suspect_ they switched me from annual billing to monthly while I was updating, but the support chat guy said I was still annual. If it turns out he was wrong, I'm out.
By stevenkkim 2025-10-2720:19 I suspect Dropbox doesn't care about b2c customers anymore... only b2b
By giancarlostoro 2025-10-2717:311 reply The worst part is it literally costs them the same to tack on AI they are just hiking the price in order to generate more revenue. Running Word locally does not cost them more.
By kenjackson 2025-10-2718:322 reply Actually I doubt that's true. There is a cost to running AI in the cloud (I assume its not run locally).
By stevenkkim 2025-10-2719:37 Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's in the cloud and not local. Still useless to me.
I use AI all the time when coding (very useful) and ChatGPT in general is also very useful. Never found Windows co-pilot or Office co-pilot useful for anything.
By giancarlostoro 2025-10-2723:03 My argument is that running the Windows software on the end users machine does not cost them any additional compute. The AI does, they could “eat the cost” easily. Now they are having people cancel their plans.
> Family plan went from $99/yr to $129/yr.
How did you find out it was $30 more? Did they email you?
By stevenkkim 2025-10-2719:331 reply Yes, here's the email. No mention of the $99 no-AI option.
Thank you for being a valued Microsoft 365 subscriber. To reflect the value we’ve added over the past decade, address rising costs, and enable us to continue delivering new innovations, we’re increasing the price of your subscription.
Effective February 14, 2025, the price for Microsoft 365 Family subscriptions will increase from USD 99.99* per year to USD 129.99* per year. To continue with the new price, no action is needed—your payment method on file will be automatically charged. To make changes to your subscription plan or turn off recurring billing, visit your Microsoft account at least two days before your next billing date.
By maintaining your subscription, you’ll enjoy secure cloud storage, advanced security for your data and devices, and cutting-edge AI-powered features, along with all your other subscription benefits. Thank you for choosing Microsoft.
Learn more about how to manage your subscription, including how to cancel and switch your subscription.
* Subscription prices listed do not include any discounts, promotions, or special offers that may be available.
By EvanAnderson 2025-10-2720:361 reply Same email here. My plan renewed in May. Absolutely no advertising that I could keep my "classic" plan. It seemed like the only choice was $129 or the highway.
I just did the steps described in[0] to convert back to the "Classic" plan. Microsoft says my plan will renew in May for $99, but I'm not getting the $15 of the $30 I was forced into paying in May back. I've never used any of the Copilot "features". I'd rather have my renewal discounted by $15 to $30.
As I said in another comment: We need a US class action. It will only enrich the lawyers but it might serve as some type of deterrent to Microsoft. Maybe. Probably not.
Netflix and Spotify also auto bump the prices even for auto-renewal. I believe the issue here is that Microsoft created a new pricing category while keeping the $99 one, but bumped everyone to the new one. That is where it gets sketchy.
If they eliminated the $99 one then it might be a nothingburger.
Might be class action worthy.
By hsbauauvhabzb 2025-10-2723:40 To me this is what seems odd, how can you charge my card more without me explicitly allowing that?
I would have thought visa and Mastercard would have something to say about it, but they’re probably in bed with FAANG anyway.
