Many people who have Microsoft 365 Personal and Family licenses have recently received emails from Microsoft about their licenses. These are genuine emails; here's what they're all about.
Over the last couple of years Microsoft have added their AI feature, Copilot, to their Personal and Family packages, and then increased the cost of those licenses for that new feature. What some people realised was that if you elect to cancel the license, you would be offered the option to return to what they're now calling Classic Personal or Family, which is the original license you had without Copilot, and somewhat cheaper than the Copilot-inclusive package. These emails seem to be Microsoft letting people know that this option is available.
The reason they've ended up sending two emails is that they lumped NZ and Australia together and when Kiwis were clicking on the link, they were being directed to an Australian site. The second email sought to correct this. However, my policy on clicking links in emails is generally to avoid it anyway. Especially if the email appears to be from Microsoft, which is such a common company for scammers to impersonate.
So if you do want to switch your Personal or Family MS365 license back to Classic and ditch Copilot, here's how to do it:
Go to portal.office.com and log into your Microsoft 365 account. In the bottom left you'll see your name and initials, click on it. Then click on View Account. Then select Subscriptions, find your subscription and cancel it. This will not immediately cancel your license. Another window will open giving you the option to return to Classic Personal (or Classic Family) at your next renewal date, and that date will be shown.
Now in the emails it does mention a refund, and seems to suggest that this will be applied at the renewal date as long as you revert back to Classic before the end of 2025. I hope this happens but I haven't had any confirmation of this occurring for anyone yet, as I haven't yet spoken to anyone who has done this and passed their renewal date. And of course, you may not wish to revert to Classic. If you like using Copilot you may wish to keep paying for it.
If anyone wants to do this I'm happy to help, but you might as well give it a go yourself first - saving money is better when you don't have to pay to do it :)