Why I cancelled my Microsoft Office 365 Subscription

I have to admit to getting very cross with Microsoft this month. Having had an Office 365 Subscription for many years with an annual cost of £79.99 per year, I was pretty annoyed to say the least when they informed me that to renew in July the new cost would be £104.99.

Now I’m not saying that this isn’t still a pretty reasonable Office 365 subscription fee, it’s frankly a bargain for anyone that needs robust email, word processing and spreadsheet tools. I like working offline so I’m not a fan of Google Workspace (and frankly they’re not quite as good as Microsoft’s tools in some minor ways). What peeved me was the massive 30% price hike.

We’re all going through tough economic times and after my mobile, gas, water, electricity, road tax, grocery bill and just about everything I ever buy has skyrocketed in price, Microsoft was the final straw that got my goat!

Back in the day, I had a copy of Office 2007 which was paid for once and forever, but although I still have the install disks it’s just way to out of date to use. So I did what any rational human being would do and Googled to see if I could find a single payment option instead of an annual Microsoft Office 365 Subscription. The answer is yes!

Microsoft didn’t even have the good grace to tell me that I didn’t really need Microsoft 365 Family just for myself and that there’s an option for Microsoft 365 Personal (currently £84.99 per year so only a fiver more than I had been paying!)… but before I noticed that I’d already hit up a popular daily deals site where I found a Microsoft Office 365 Lifetime Account for just £9.95.

Even better, today there was a promo that involved clicking a button just above the Buy Button which reduced the cost to just £7.96. A couple of clicks later, paying with PayPal, and I had an email in my inbox with log in credentials for a new Microsoft Account.

Next I had to click the download button to install Microsoft Office 365, except I didn’t because it’s already installed on my Laptop and my Smartphone… all I had to do was go into the Office Account settings on each device and change to my new log in credentials. It really couldn’t have been simpler.

So thank you Microsoft, by annoying me you caused me five minutes work, cost me £7.96 for the rest of my life, and I’m using the exact same products as before.

I do feel a little bit bad for Microsoft, if they’d kept their cost for a Microsoft Office 365 Subscription at eighty quid a year (or only increased by a more reasonable amount) they’d have carried on getting an annual subscription out of me. But if you’re still paying an annual subscription, do what I did, save some money, and cough up £7.96 for a life time subscription (and yes it’s still good for up to 5 devices).