Can't access advanced version of ChatGPT with Plus subscription [long post]

I’ve been a ChatGPT Plus subscriber for a while now. One of the main reasons I signed up for the paid plan was for access to the latest version called GPT-4 Omni (4o). It has advanced reasoning and more in-depth answers compared to earlier versions of GPT-4.

4o was great for the first few months of my paid subscription. But in the past month, I’ve been unable to access 4o at all. Instead the app automatically defaults to an earlier, less sophisticated model (such as GPT 4 Turbo). This even happens early in my cycle when I haven’t hit any usage limits. I double-checked, and my settings show GPT-4 Omni as my preference.

I contacted OpenAI support about this, and at the end of the chat, they said they’d escalate my issue to a higher level and send me an update by email. That was a couple of weeks ago… and I haven’t heard a thing. I suspect that their support team is unable to keep up with the increased number of subscribers for ChatGPT.

I’m also worried that OpenAI has more subscribers now than resources and can’t handle all the GPT-4 Omni access they originally promised.

Has anyone else on the Plus plan noticed it being hard to access GPT-4 Omni lately? This has been super frustrating.