Debbie's right. It isn't that tests are getting more expensive (because they are actually getting cheaper, as she describes), it's that the low-level YDNA tests in particular are being phased out.
I imagine one reason for this is that customers get rather peeved when a 12-marker test tells them essentially nothing. I think this is probably at least partly the company's fault, since the 12-marker test is kind of a shiny-object marketing ploy to draw people in, and they really don't explain that they are unlikely to learn anything useful from it (especially if they are the common or garden English R1b1a2 Y haplogroup, which is really all most people will learn).
The 37-marker test really is the minimum to start with for male surname line matching. My example of how even a 25-marker test can be misleading is an indication (2 steps out at 25 markers, 8 steps out at 37 markers). Testing beyond that can be done to refine matches that are found at 37 markers.
I have only just recently realized how much the cost of the autosomal has fallen and I'm likely going to go for a couple of them. I may be consulting you about that, Debbie.
(A comparative candidate for triangulating is exactly what would help! There are none in my line -- no descendants of the 1817-marriage couple except the males in my line from their grandson and some descendants of his sister, their granddaughter. The new administrator for the surname project that my kit matched is trying to get one of his own very close matches, who has an established Devon line of the name, to get the kit into the surname project -- and hopefully then into yours as well!)
