PAST DUE SUBSCRIPTION!? I didn't know my xbox live account was a UTILITY

I was just attempting to have my weekly game night with my buds. Mind you I was successfully playing destiny 2 without them, interacting with humans in the tower and whatnot UNTIL I got an invite request. Ok, it says I'm gonna need to re-up NBD.
Then when I went to add 9.99 to my XBL a-la-cart I get an error message which says I have to go check on my account msg or some such nonsense (this happened hours ago now sorry) and when I do that it states that my 3-month subscription is "PAST DUE".

Now, in my thinking, the purchase of XBL time has always been "a-la-cart" meaning I pay for chunks of time as I see fit and the ONLY thing XBL dictates is the increments and general pricing of that time. What is different right now is that I was UNABLE to
purchase just $9.99 worth of time to make my account active again, I was REQUIRED to purchase the last "unit size" as I'll call it $24.99 since I dunno, they "let me keep using their services" past the date I had paid for? This is why I say it feels like a
utility and not like a service.

TMI warning:

I'm in a very not awesome place in my life, and the weekly gaming with my 2 best friends really helps a ton. Sometimes it's processing life, sometimes it's processing vex and bounties and whatever. Point is I have come to really appreciate it. I had $50
in my bank account, and that has to last for just a few more days, but I'll be honest in my current situation I don't have tremendous confidence that's totally accurate. So when XBL tells me I CAN'T just spend $10 to play with my friends (literally at the
moment they invite me to a party) I HAVE to pay whatever last subscription rate I paid because it's already past due...[Mod removed- inappropriate] man this is kinda nasty to me.

Its appearance is predatory, manipulative, and calculated. I don't like it one bit, and I personally feel like XBL owes me time right now. I didn't' want to waste money on a bad price, I'd prefer to pay the $9.99 and then shop deals on slickdeals or any
other numbers of sites where I can get a year of XBL for $19.99 or $29.99, etc...

I hope this post makes sense. It's late for me and I just wanted to capture all this after we finished our game night tonight.

The question: Hey MS why are you FORCING people to spend certain amounts on their XBL account renewals? It looks really shady to me especially when this service costs you next to nothing to provide at this point in your hardware lifecycle.

:)