iCloud Storage Scam?

I have the minimum iCloud subscription at 200GB. A few months ago I was reaching the limit so I went through my iPhone and deleted nearly 10,000 photos. It took days! At first, it showed I had a massive reduction in space, but within days, and without adding anything new to my phone, I was hovering around 170GB. I watched it closely as it felt suspicious, and I’ve taken photos in that time, but nothing to the tune of 10,000 photos to replace the storage I had freed. 2 days ago I receive an email from Apple that I only have 634MB remaining before I’m at 200GB. Meanwhile, when I look myself I’m still sitting at 173GB. Today, I delete an additional 1000 photos and within minutes receive an email that I’m over my limit?! Sorry, what? Wondering if anyone has ever experienced these extortive practices as well and how to manage it?

I have 256GB on my phone, only 174 being utilized. And yes, I know iCloud syncs with my laptop as well; I haven’t touched my computer all summer so nothing has been added there to mysteriously increase the volume of GB that seemingly appeared out of nowhere, conveniently do Apple can keep hounding me to purchase more storage.

I spoke with an Apple agent directly a few months ago as my phone had began glitching (just as I was reaching the 200GB mark and prior to deleting the thousands of photos) and he said it’s because I was out of iCloud storage, I explained how I had a 256GB phone so this made no sense as I wasn’t out of phone storage, and he more or less confirmed how this didn’t matter because they essentially want to force you to purchase the subscription option. Has anyone found a way around this as I both refuse and can’t afford to increase the subscription plan, especially when there’s such a high cost from the 200GB option to the next tier (and the offerings haven’t been updated in years).