UK subscribers who watched their Microsoft 365 bill climb after Copilot turned up in Word and Outlook are now the subject of a formal consumer-law investigation. Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority opened a case against Microsoft (MSFT ) on July 27, 2026, made public two days later, over whether Personal and Family customers were given clear enough information about their options before their subscriptions renewed at a higher price.
The regulator is looking at what Microsoft told those customers ahead of renewal, and whether they could see what the alternatives cost. It has reached no conclusions about whether the law was broken. It is, however, the third national authority to act on the same Copilot rollout, and the first that can decide the question itself rather than argue it in front of a judge.
What the regulator is examining
From January 2025, Microsoft gave existing Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscribers access to new features, including Copilot, at no extra cost for the remainder of their term. When that term ended, customers moved onto a plan carrying those features at a higher price unless they actively picked another option or cancelled. Plans without the new features were withdrawn from new subscribers.
Existing customers did have a cheaper route for a limited window: a “Classic” plan with the same features and price they had before. Annual subscribers who ended up on the newer plan pay £25 a year more:
- Classic Microsoft 365 Personal costs £59.99 a year, against £84.99 for the plan with the added features.
- Classic Microsoft 365 Family costs £79.99 a year, against £104.99 for the newer version.
The enforcement case names Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited, the entity that sells these subscriptions to UK households. The CMA framed the investigation as being about presentation rather than the product, saying it supports AI adoption in the UK but expects customers to be able to shop around.
Enforcement without a courtroom
Since April 2025, the CMA has been able to decide for itself whether consumer law has been broken instead of taking a company to court to prove it. It has used those powers to secure more than £1.95 million in refunds for customers and to impose close to £6.2 million in fines. The maximum penalty for an infringement is 10% of a company’s global turnover.
“When a business changes its subscription plans, customers need clear and timely information about their options,” said Hayley Fletcher, the CMA’s senior director for consumer protection, who added that people leaning more heavily on AI tools such as Copilot should be able to understand when they have a chance to compare products.
The consumer case runs alongside a separate CMA investigation, opened in May 2026, into Microsoft’s business software ecosystem, which examines how Windows, Office, Teams and Copilot are sold to commercial customers. That investigation turns on market power; this one turns on what a household saw on screen before its payment date.
Three regulators, one Copilot rollout
Australia’s competition regulator moved first. On October 27, 2025, the ACCC began Federal Court proceedings against Microsoft’s Australian arm and its US parent, alleging that roughly 2.7 million subscribers were told they had to accept Copilot-integrated plans at higher prices or cancel, when a third option existed. The Classic plans, the ACCC alleges, were reachable only after a customer had started the cancellation process and clicked through to the following screen. Annual Australian prices rose 45% for Personal and 29% for Family after the integration. The regulator is seeking penalties, injunctions and consumer redress.
Italy’s competition authority opened its own investigation on June 26, 2026 into Microsoft Ireland Operations and the company’s Italian subsidiary, covering both Copilot and the Designer image tool. It is examining whether the information reached consumers in fragmented form, whether they were placed by default on a costlier plan unless they exercised a right of withdrawal, and whether the way the change was communicated amounted to an aggressive commercial practice.
What it means for AI bundling
All three cases turn on how the change was communicated: the renewal notice, the price comparison, and the cancellation flow — the surface where a subscriber learns that AI has been added and what it now costs. The Copilot integration reached consumer Microsoft 365 worldwide, with price increases varying by market, which is why a single product decision is now generating separate cases in three jurisdictions.
That route is how consumer AI now reaches scale: the assistant arrives inside a product the customer already pays for, on terms the platform sets. It is also where consumer-protection law now has purchase, and the friction shows up elsewhere in the market, including the standoff over AI-generated answers that has publishers weighing whether to pull their content from Google’s AI.
For product and pricing teams shipping AI into an installed base, the practical read is that the cheaper option a company keeps available has to be visible at the moment of decision, not merely reachable. The CMA’s initial evidence-gathering phase runs through December 2026, with the next public update on the case due by the end of the year.
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