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Comment by eXpl0it3r | Hacker News Reader

For those just skimming the article and who haven't heard, as an existing subscriber to Microsoft 365, you can switch to the Classic variant without AI and without the price increase, by clicking on "Cancel subscription" on your account page and selecting Classic.

...at least for now...

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This doesn't even work well. It was still listing the old price for my renewal on Feb 1, but I wanted to make sure I wasn't billed more, so I clicked on "Cancel subscription", and didn't see any option for Classic, so I clicked the "I don't want my subscription" button, figuring that the option was behind that... and it cancelled my entire subscription. Resubscribing then only gave me the option to subscribe at the new +30% price rate.

Had to spend two hours with MS support to get them to cancel my subscription again and actually get me onto the Classic plan. I lost two weeks of my plan that I'd previously paid for, without recompense, and they warned that the Classic plan was a one-time transition thing, so by that measure I'm also out an entire year of the Classic plan compared to if I'd renewed at the old rate on Feb 1, 2025, and then switched to my year of Classic for my Feb 1, 2026 renewal. Also kicked my entire family of their shared plans so had to re-invite and subscribe them all.

I don't even care about the Office apps, all I really care about is OneDrive, but there aren't any great alternatives for that... e.g. Dropbox Family is nearly double the price of 365 Family.

Upvoted because it's an actually helpful comment -- I've just downgraded mine to classic. I dont need to pay for several AI subscriptions -- they all do the same thing.

Based on the fact of them using a dark pattern to hide a subscription tier, and effectively hiding the one that they're claiming to no longer exist hence the price increase would have me cancel out of principle.

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