I have tried twice getting a notice of failed payment due to change of banks and therefore change of credit card. But then I gave it the new card's details and everything was good. However, I don't remember if I was passed some doomsday deadline or not.

Not saying it's not an issue and I would consider it bad business for Microsoft to delete users data without proper notifications and a long enough time frame to fix any payment issues. However, deleting data online is not ransomware - if Microsoft deletes the data, then they have nothing to hold ransom.