I have been a paying ChatGPT user with an established workflow built around chats and Projects.
After encountering the new 5-hour usage limitation, my existing workflow was substantially disrupted. I did not receive advance email notice explaining how this limitation would affect the way I had been using ChatGPT.
In order to continue using ChatGPT as my primary assistant without that limitation, I ended up creating a ChatGPT Business workspace and purchasing a Premium seat. My monthly cost went from approximately $20 to $150 for the Business configuration I was presented with.
The more serious issue occurred during setup.
ChatGPT explicitly asked whether I wanted to transfer my Personal chat history and GPTs to Business or “Start as empty workspace.” I deliberately chose Start as empty workspace because I wanted my existing Personal workspace and Projects left untouched.
Nevertheless, two conversations that had been part of Projects in my Personal workspace — “Create Sagittarius sneaker print” and “Find SHARGE Pro 2 SSD” — are now appearing as standalone recent chats inside my new Business workspace.
The Business workspace itself says “No projects.” Those original Projects are also no longer where I expected them in my Personal workspace.
I did not authorize those Projects or conversations to be transferred.
This leaves me with several serious concerns:
- Why did Personal workspace content appear in Business after I explicitly selected Start as empty workspace?
- What happened to the original Project containers, including their files, instructions, and project context?
- Is any other Personal workspace data being moved or changed?
- Why isn’t there a safe, documented way for an established Personal user to move an entire workflow—including Projects—into Business?
- Why was such a significant usage limitation introduced without clearer advance communication to existing paying users whose workflows depended on the previous access?
I have screenshots documenting the setup choice, Business workspace, Premium seat assignment, invoice, and the affected chats.
I am posting this publicly because this is not merely a billing question. It is a data integrity, migration, product communication, and continuity-of-workflow issue.
I would appreciate an explanation from OpenAI and, most importantly, a way to restore/preserve my Projects and their complete structure without further data loss.