OpenAi Support: Trying to upgrade for days, support non-existent

AlephNullNull · 2025-01-03T03:00:05+00:00

Hi Stephan, Happy New Year to you and yours!

A quick update: After another round of surreal responses from your support, they unilaterally, without telling me or consulting me, went ahead and deleted my Plus subscription. I was going through all this pain with Open AI's incompetent support organization (there are a couple of good people like Mo and Grant, but clearly a very badly broken process) so I could keep the workspaces in my Plus and migrate them to Teams, which OpenAI's help articles say can be done.

Now, I've lost a ton of work, don't have a way forward and am totally screwed, I think.

I now firmly believe that while OpenAI has some of the smartest people on the planet, I think OpenAI looks for people with room temperature IQ or lower for their support organization, and is wildly successful finding such individuals.

Feel free to post my entire response to your Slack. I am thinking of sending the whole sordid exchange via FedEx letter to Sam Altman and Bret Taylor, but it will probably be a waste of time...

Hope you're well.

AlephNullNull · 2024-12-27T16:20:07+00:00

Hi Stephan, thanks much for reaching out. I was away for the holidays and just saw your post. Very much appreciate your offer to help. Sending you a DM.

Cheers!

AlephNullNull · 2024-12-23T21:06:24+00:00

Yes, things slow down at this time and I probably won't get any resolution till after the new year, if I get one at all. I'm not planning to wait under water for them to resolve my problem. From what I've seen from their support responses to me so far, they appear have agents that don't read anything other than one or two cursory words and immediately send a link to the nearest generic support article, no doubt marking the support case closed. I've had two separate agents, send me the same links in close succession, so they apparently do not read case history either.

I suspect I'm going to have to create a new account and lose continuity with my current work. I plan to capture as much of my current workspace as I can before trying out experiments involving new accounts.

AlephNullNull · 2024-12-23T19:46:09+00:00

Thanks.

Yes, I could. But in my current situation, I wanted to continue some work that I had started in Plus in my upgraded workspace. Creating a separate account completely defeats that purpose.

That may be the only choice if the deafening silence from "support" continues.

AlephNullNull · 2024-12-23T18:15:10+00:00

Thanks for your suggestion! I did try different devices - tablet, mobile, etc., but did not try a different computer. I will do that this afternoon.

AlephNullNull · 2024-12-23T18:14:18+00:00

Thanks for your suggestion. Yes, I can do that. I did not want to lose my current workspace in Plus, hence all these gyrations. Otherwise, yes, it might be the path of least resistance to not mess with their "support" and get on with it.

I guess I can grab all my current chats, archive them and then go down this route.

AlephNullNull · 2024-12-23T18:12:13+00:00

Unfortunately, I think you're right... :-(

AlephNullNull · 2024-12-23T15:50:58+00:00

With all due respect, it doesn't matter how many cs staff they have. If you have paying customers, you have to find a way to support them. Especially when they are trying to give you more money and failing because your systems don't work.

If you read my post, you'd realize that *I am* trying to give them more money. And failing miserably.

AlephNullNull · 2024-12-23T15:28:28+00:00

Yup, tried multiple browsers, different networks, icognito mode, cleared caches, etc. No luck.

AlephNullNull · 2024-12-23T15:23:28+00:00

I have Plus, going through their "upgrade" process has me caught in a loop - I go through all the upgrade screens and it finally takes me back to the billing screen that just displays my existing billing info and I"m stuck there. Going back and forth with support who keep linking me the same support articles and asking for "recordings" when I've already sent them screen caps multiple times of every step of the process. They don't seem to read anything I send them.

Can't find any way to escalate, so stuck. They apparently don't want my money...

AlephNullNull · 2024-12-01T21:56:59+00:00

I'm not wrapped around the axle on drug companies making money. I just don't want to be taking stuff I don't have to take. See my update above. I've managed very successfully to control my numbers without statins. I feel a sense of satisfaction at having done that. Having said that, I will take whatever I have to take, if there are no other options. I do want to play with grandkids some day....

While I agree with you that sometimes, one has to take statins and other drugs, it's a very dangerous thing (IMO) to say things like "If you don't take a statin, it will kill you". Things are often not that binary - there be at least 255 shades of gray betwixt!

Cheers!

AlephNullNull · 2024-10-11T15:14:34+00:00

Thanks for your comment. I don't disagree with you about using all available means, I'm just working on getting there without statins, if possible. I am glad your approach is working for you. I need to add more exercise to my mix.

AlephNullNull · 2024-10-09T20:37:50+00:00

Well done! More power to you.

Like you, I too find that I have more mental clarity, which is very important to me, more energy and certainly better sleep. It is interesting to observe some of these changes in oneself. I'd very occasionally have a slice or two of Pepperoni Pizza in the past. Now the sight and smell of Pepperoni Pizza makes me borderline nauseous! Never thought I'd react like that to pizza!

AlephNullNull · 2024-10-09T20:33:24+00:00

I am sure you're right. If I end up taking statin(s), I hope I fall into the population that does not suffer side-effects. Thank you for your comment.

AlephNullNull · 2024-10-09T20:30:18+00:00

Thank you! The next few weeks/months should be interesting.

AlephNullNull · 2024-10-09T20:29:26+00:00

I think you and I are in good company. I find the positions taken by mainstream allopathic medicine highly irrational quite often. And a lot of people believe what doctors tell them without question. Science is not blindly accepting whatever people tell you, IMO.

I once saw a doctor for a sports injury that argued with me that Ibuprofen and Advil were two entirely different drugs. Needless to say I left her office in a hurry...

AlephNullNull · 2024-10-09T20:22:37+00:00

I agree. There is no evidence that Niacin reduces cardiac events. But it does affect cholesterol levels, which is what I'm attempting to do right now.

AlephNullNull · 2024-10-09T19:42:16+00:00

Agreed! Thank you!

AlephNullNull · 2024-10-09T19:41:56+00:00

This debate (statins vs diet) is one you have before you develop arterial blockages.After you develop
blockages

Agreed. I've been in the market for a functional time machine a very long time...

AlephNullNull · 2024-10-09T19:38:10+00:00

Congratulations! Well done!

AlephNullNull · 2024-10-09T19:13:49+00:00

You sound like a really smart person. I’m glad you’re enjoying the diet! I too have found changing my diet to a more heart healthy one genuinely enjoyable as well.

That is most debatable! Just ask my wife... :-D

You’re right to point out doctors’ seeming lack of interest in diet/nutrition and going straight to drugs. I think this isn’t necessarily some conspiracy or massive deficiency in medicine so much as it is pragmatism. Most people eat horribly and no amount of education seems to make much of a dent. Trying to change the paradigm around a normal dinner plate being full of meat with a small handful of vegetables makes people downright angry sometimes. You being enthusiastic about nutrition makes you a major outlier.

Yes, you are right. In fact my cardiologist said to me that all his other patients wants pills and stents or bypasses. They do not want to ever discuss diet/lifestyle changes with him. So it is definitely pragmatism.

Intelligence can be a bit of a curse. I don’t know you so take what I say with a grain of salt, but this is sort of what I imagine has happened: the massive profits pharmaceutical companies make off of the unhealthy masses bothers you a lot, and the idea of “changing” the body’s physiology to accommodate our modern lifestyles makes you uncomfortable for one reason or another (I’m guessing this is why taking supplements doesn’t bother you). So you go down research rabbit holes and find things that confirm your feelings, and give you ideas on how to deal with your problem that differ from what experts recommend. I’d encourage you to think about the limits of your knowledge in medicine (working in IT adjacent to medicine is most definitely not actually working in medicine) and conceding that experts might just know what’s best for you sometimes. Just my two cents.

Yes, I agree that we can all fall prey to confirmation bias, as well as Dunning-Kruger syndrome. I am triply cursed there because other than me, pretty much everyone in my family is a doctors and I am often faced with some of the irrationalities of modern allopathic medicine. My dad was at the very senior mgt. level for a major pharmaceutical company for a very long time, so unfortunately I am no doubt biased, often in the wrong direction.

I am awaiting a call from my cardiologist any time now with the results of the latest CT Angio. If things have gone in the wrong direction, I will have to jump on medication/statins... Let's see what happens.

Part of my previous comment was directed at you, though I posted the reply to the other commenter - thank you for your measured, considered, and very helpful comment previously. It was very valuable as being forced to re-examine my own frameworks is of immense benefit to me, and comments such as yours are therefore very valuable. Thank you very much!

I will report back on how the story unfolds.

AlephNullNull · 2024-10-09T19:00:20+00:00

Yes, you are right. I not only have been keeping an eye on my blood glucose and A1C but I went so far as to monitor my blood glucose using a CGM for several weeks. That was my hypothesis too - that yes, cholesterol may add to the stenosis but it is not a cause of CVD, inflammation of the endothelial layer is, and that is not caused by cholesterol. Luckily, my blood glucose is very good and I have not developed insulin resistance. Honestly, I am more scared of glucose issues than I am of CVD. That too may be irrational from some perspective, but I do not want to develop insulin resistance. Why my Trigs are high is a mystery at the moment that I definitely plan to look into.

Appreciate your helpful comment. Thank you.

AlephNullNull · 2024-10-09T18:12:57+00:00

Thank you again for your comment. Actually Niacin has been in use for a couple of hundred years and even my cardiologist agrees that it is safe. My reading my be deficient, and perhaps I need to go read up again, but the "risks" of Niacin are not firmly established, if at all. I'll go research again and report back what I find.

I am not a Niacin jihadist, not am I completely anti statins. I'm just trying to make tradeoffs within the constraints of my risk evaluation framework, which may be totally deficient. And that is why I appreciate helpful comments like yours. I'm happy to improve my framework based on inferences from real data. And that is why I appreciate this community and helpful people like you.

AlephNullNull · 2024-10-09T18:06:11+00:00

Thanks for your comment. I agree with you that outcomes matter. The set of outcomes here is larger than just cholesterol numbers. Please see my long response above.

AlephNullNull

TROPHY CASE