TL;DR: A hackathon (sponsored by OpenAI) added 7 days of Pro access directly to my account. When that bonus access expired, it also cancelled my own separately-paid Pro subscription — which I’d paid through July 17. I’m now on Free with ~10 paid days gone, and support has gone quiet. Has anyone hit this, and how did you get it fixed?
The full story:
I’ve been a paying ChatGPT Pro subscriber, billed monthly on the web, with my current period valid through July 17.
On July 1, I joined a hackathon that OpenAI sponsored. Because of the sponsorship, participants weren’t given redemption codes — the organisers added 7 days of Pro (20x) access directly to every account registered via Luma. So this bonus access got stacked on top of my existing paid subscription.
On July 7, that 7-day bonus expired. But instead of just ending the bonus, the system also cancelled my own paid Pro subscription. My account immediately dropped to Free and now shows only “Upgrade.”
What I’ve already checked (so this isn’t the usual login mixup):
- Correct account — billing email matches my invoice
- Personal account, not a workspace
- Logged out on all devices and back in — still Free
- Stripe portal shows only my past paid invoice, no active subscription
- A support agent confirmed the charge matches my account and there’s no active plan anymore
So it’s clearly a subscription-state bug: a temporary/bonus grant wasn’t isolated from the underlying paid subscription, so when it expired it took the paid plan down with it.
Where I’m stuck:
Support was actually helpful at first — a live agent asked for the hackathon details, which I provided in full. But it’s now been a couple of days with no reply, and earlier every new support chat kept getting auto-closed as a “duplicate” while the original thread got no response. Meanwhile my paid days are ticking away toward July 17.
My questions for the community:
- Has anyone else received bonus/sponsored access on top of a paid plan and had their paid subscription cancelled when the bonus expired?
- If so, how did you get it reinstated — and did they restore the remaining paid period?
- Any tips for getting a stuck support thread actually looked at before the paid period runs out?
I don’t want a refund — I just want the Pro I already paid for, through July 17. Any advice appreciated 