If you are relying on something for your business that you paid nothing for, you get your money's worth.
Yes, and Gitlab.com Bronze Support is a premium service offered on the Gitlab.com platform. It is not the hosted or self hosted premium offerings.
> paying customers/CE users weren't affected by the outage.
That is incorrect. If you pay for Bronze Support you are definitely affected by this outage. Hosted and Self-hosted customers are unaffected.