Have you ever felt like a company you trusted suddenly changed the rules without warning? That’s what happened to me with OpenAI. As a paying customer with a personal Pro subscription and a business Team subscription, I was shocked when they removed access to other models without any notice. No warning, no transition period – just gone. And it’s not the first time they’ve done this.
It started when they introduced GPT-5, which I was excited to try. But then I realized that it wasn’t an option alongside existing models – it had replaced them. And for businesses like mine that rely on specific capabilities, this was a huge problem. We paid for access to those capabilities, and now they’re taking them away.
But it gets worse. GPT 4.5, which was the reason I paid for Teams/Pro in the first place, is now considered ‘legacy’ and will soon be gone. And the new GPT-5 is a massive downgrade for deep research. It’s like taking a step backward.
I’m not the only one who feels this way. OpenAI has a history of making changes without warning or explanation. They’ve killed off the Codex API, disabled ‘Browse with Bing’ without notice, and even retired models with little or no warning. It’s a pattern of behavior that shows they’re either hostile to their users’ needs or oblivious to them.
So what can we do? For me, the answer is to move on to competitors like Google and Claude, who respect their paying customers enough not to pull the rug out from under them. It’s time for OpenAI to learn that they can’t keep changing the rules without consequences.
What do you think? Have you had a similar experience with OpenAI or another company? Share your story in the comments!