When a Copilot SKU Changes Without a Buying Decision
In January 2025, Microsoft added Copilot to Microsoft 365 Personal and Family. At renewal, UK subscribers were rolled onto the costlier Copilot-equipped tier unless they switched to Classic or canceled. Staying put cost £25 more a year. On 27 July 2026 the UK Competition and Markets Authority opened a consumer-protection investigation into whether those customers were given the information they needed before the SKU changed under them. The CMA has not decided whether the law was broken.
That’s the problem.
This is not an AI-adoption story, and it is not E7. E7 is an enterprise SKU. This file is UK consumer Microsoft 365 and a default at renewal. The CMA is asking whether Microsoft misled people about the plans, the cost difference, and the Classic off-ramp. Your job is not to predict the finding. Your job is to know whether any of those consumer SKUs sit in your estate, and whether a SKU on your commercial paper can change without a buying decision.
What the CMA actually opened
The 29 July 2026 press release and the case page are the primary sources. The case is Microsoft: consumer protection enforcement case, opened 27 July 2026 against Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited. Next update by the end of 2026. No finding.
From January 2025, existing Personal and Family customers received Copilot and other new features at no extra cost for the remainder of the then-current term. At renewal they were automatically rolled onto the richer plan at a higher price unless they picked another plan or ended the subscription. Microsoft stopped offering Personal and Family to new subscribers without those features. Existing customers got a time-limited Classic plan: same features as before, same price.
The CMA’s figures: Classic Personal is £59.99 a year against £84.99 with the new features. Classic Family is £79.99 against £104.99. For annual Personal and Family customers, that is £25 a year more than Classic.
The CMA said: “The investigation will examine whether customers were given key information about the plans and the difference in cost to understand the options available to them before making a decision.”
Hayley Fletcher, senior director for consumer protection, said: “When a business changes its subscription plans, customers need clear and timely information about their options. Our investigation will consider whether Microsoft customers were misled and ended up paying more as a result.”
Microsoft’s January 2025 consumer blog is the vendor’s own record of the change. It said existing subscribers would see the US price rise at next renewal, and that customers with recurring billing could switch to Basic or, for a limited time, to Personal Classic or Family Classic. The CMA is asking whether that explanation was clear and timely enough in the UK.
Australia and Italy have their own files on the same family of facts. Those are other dockets. They are not a UK verdict.
A SKU change without a buying decision
Microsoft put Copilot into the default consumer SKU. The cheaper plan without it became an opt-out labeled Classic. At renewal, inaction was treated as consent to the richer, costlier tier.
That is defaulting. It is not a buy.
A buying decision is a person choosing a SKU, a quantity, and a price. Defaulting is a catalog change that lands on the people who do nothing. The £25 is the consumer delta the CMA quotes. It is not your EA unit price, and it is not E7.
If that pattern feels familiar, the problem is not your team’s maturity. Enterprise defaulting looks different on paper and works the same way in a meeting. Copilot attach gets framed as “do you want AI.” Add-ons auto-renew on the anniversary. The vendor has a number. You are asked whether you want to keep up.
Do not let Microsoft frame this headline as “the CMA is looking at consumer plans, so nothing changes on the EA.” The right question is whether a SKU in your estate can move to a richer, costlier tier without someone in procurement signing for it.
Picture your procurement director, sixty days from a Microsoft conversation. Finance has seen the CMA case in the press. The CIO asks whether any of “our” Microsoft 365 is on consumer paper. Someone has a household plan on a corporate card. Someone else bought a consumer seat for a contractor and never moved them.
If SAM takes three weeks to recast consumer versus commercial, Classic versus Copilot-equipped, assigned versus paid, the headline becomes the file. The CMA story will be current. The estate will not.
This is not a criticism of the teams pulling the two exports. Traditional SAM tools collect seats and answer slowly. They were built to prove who has Word, not to tell you which SKU changed at the last anniversary without a PO. The gap is interpretation work.
Consumer paper is not your EA. Some of it still sits in the building.
Look at your own Microsoft file. Most SAM teams have a row that says Microsoft 365 and a count that says seats. Those two words do not tell you which catalog a seat sits on.
The CMA is reading consumer Microsoft 365: Personal, Family, Classic, the £25 delta, the auto-move at renewal. Your EA, CSP, or MCA is a different commercial object. E7, if you are even looking at it, is a third. Some estates run all of them at once: corporate-card consumer plans mixed with the commercial tenant you actually negotiate.
Your job is narrower. Map the paper. Separate consumer SKUs from commercial SKUs. Know which seats can default at renewal without a buying decision.
What to check on the M365 SKU mix
Do this in the next thirty days, as a decision pack rather than a project.
| What you produce | Why it changes the meeting |
|---|---|
| A consumer-versus-commercial map | Consumer Microsoft 365, Classic, Copilot-equipped consumer, E3, E5, Copilot add-on. The CMA is examining consumer defaulting. Brief the CIO on the catalog you actually have. |
| Seats that can move without a PO | Auto-renew, trial-to-paid, corporate-card consumer plans. If inaction is treated as consent, list every SKU where that is true. |
| Classic versus Copilot-equipped, on consumer paper only | £25 a year is the consumer delta the CMA reports. Do not apply it to the EA. Do apply the question: who is on the default, and who opted out. |
| Assigned versus paid, by SKU | A consumer mailbox on a corporate card is not an E3. A leftover consumer seat on a contractor is not attach. Those are different objects with different exit rules. |
| A stay-versus-move number on this estate | Price the consumer slice and the commercial slice separately. The vendor walks in with a renewal. You walk in with a SKU mix. |
Can a non-specialist brief the CIO in fifteen minutes from the pack you have today? If the answer is no, you do not have a Microsoft 365 position. You have a library.
The decision layer, not another inventory
You already have admin-center exports and a seat count. The gap is not another inventory. The gap is turning that estate into a decision: which catalog each SKU sits on, which seats can default at renewal without a buying decision, and what should happen before the next Microsoft conversation. LICENSEWARE sits on the inventory and ITSM tools you already run. It is not a rip-and-replace SAM suite. It is a decision layer: what matters, why it matters now, what should happen next. Microsoft Deployment Manager is the pack that splits those catalogs. That is cost optimization on the SKU mix, not another seat count. When the model is the commodity, the question is which seats Copilot occupies as a digital workforce, and which can default without a buying decision. A live Microsoft 365 position from the Graph data you already have is the point.
If you are heading into a Microsoft conversation this year and your current tools still need three weeks to turn “we have Microsoft 365” into consumer versus commercial, Classic versus Copilot, assigned versus paid, book a Software Intelligence Review. You can also start on the free plan and run the analysis on your own data.
The question to walk in with
The CMA may find that consumer customers were misled. It may not. It has reached no conclusion. The case is open.
Your renewal will not wait for that ruling. Do not let the next meeting open as “do you want Copilot.” The right question is what you are actually running, which catalog each SKU sits on, which seats can change without a buying decision, and what you would still buy if the default had never moved. That is a data question, not a sales question.
The vendor will walk in with a number. The only question is whether you have yours first: current, defensible, and tied to the contract in front of you.
