Individual users can make use of free alternatives pretty easily, but I’m not sure they’re actually the target for the price increase here.

Schools, governments, businesses, and other institutions pay wild amounts to MS every year.

They’re speed running their product enshitification.

Video summary by Ollama AI:

The video discusses several shady practices employed by Microsoft, including:

1. Forced upselling: Microsoft changed the plan and pricing of a user's Office 365 subscription without their consent, effectively forcing them to pay more for features they didn't want.
2. Renaming and hiding plans: Microsoft renamed an existing plan (e.g., "Personal" to "Classic") and made it less visible in the user interface, while introducing a new plan with similar features at a higher price point.
3. Hallucination problem: The AI-powered feature "co-pilot" generated fabricated information, which is a known issue in generative AI.
4. Overpromising free benefits: Microsoft sales representatives touted "free AI credits" as a benefit of the more expensive plan, but these credits were not actually free and had limited value.
5. Misleading users about pricing changes: The price hike was effectively hidden by renaming and rebranding existing plans, making it unclear whether the user's subscription had actually changed in price.

The video suggests that Microsoft engaged in these practices to push customers into using features they might not want or need, rather than providing transparent and honest information about their plans and pricing.

Yea piracy is way less bullsh. Than legit software

Just don't download from untrusted sources

My favourite part was one comment that said "If they simply let you turn off the Copilot stuff, you'd just be sitting there paying the increased fee"

1. Log into Microsoft Account
2. Go to Subscriptions Page
3. Choose 365 Subscription
4. Choose Cancel option
5. Choose to "switch" to Classic version
6. Accept pop up which says you won't be charged today, but will be charged on your regular annual subscription renewal date as usual
7. Profit (well, not lose more)

Canceling to downgrade your 365 subscription is the "normal" Microsoft way, so that part is not a new scummy practice that was invented for this scummy occasion. I do hope this forced upsell comes back to bite Microsoft in the ass, most consumers won't be aware of the downgrade option, but consumer agencies shouldn't let this slide, it's setting a very bad precedent.

The ms instructions:

1. Go to Services & subscriptions and if prompted, sign in with the Microsoft account associated with your subscription.
2. Find your current subscription and select Manage > Cancel subscription.
3. The Cancel page will show you the features of your current subscription plan. If you're switching to another plan with less features, select the plan that works for you.
4. Follow the instructions to complete the switch. Your existing subscription might not change immediately, but it will automatically change to the new plan when the plan renews. You won't be charged for the new plan until it renews into that plan.
   https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/switch-between-microsoft-365-subscriptions-3fcc1efc-2722-427f-8efa-db94b9b0a36b

shoutout to massgrave.dev

I know people mentioned the free alternatives, but if the subscription is really just for office, then why not buy a license to a non web based office version? They do still make them, as much as they want to remove them completely. You can even get them heavily discounted off 3rd party sites. I got my copy of 2019 for like $20 a year before it went EOL and I'm still using it because I really don't have the highest use for it. If you want office 2021, which is good with support until end of 2026, it's about $50 right now but I see them go lower all the time and can probably get it for $30. This is the pro version as well. Sadly I don't see office 2024 for sale yet on my site but I guarantee it will be a year from now.

I’ve dropped Microsoft Office for OnlyOffice and so far I have no regrets. The one issues it has, on MacOS only, is that it does not support multiple windows. There is a workaround using the command line I believe. Otherwise it is very good and the formulas are basically 1:1 with Excel.

I haven’t done office in a while. The inception of the subscription model killed it completely for me. Scrivener is better organized for big projects. And there’s plenty of small word programs that get the job done for things like resumes and such, in lieu of Microsoft Word.

I had an older student office disc. Microsoft wouldn’t allow installation.

And then Adobe stealthed onto my elderly parents computer and killed all their photo files. Demoralizing to say the least. They won’t even engage their favorite hobby any more.

The enshittification is real.

Deny the parasite profit.