I’ve had API access blocked for about a month.
The associated credit card charges were fully reversed, promptly, by OpenAI, but no one has looked at the related negative credit that’s been blocking the account ever since. That’s what I need help getting resolved.
The API usage report shows a relatively small amount of card-charged usage and a much larger amount of additional usage (thousands of dollars) that blew through the monthly limits — looks like a limits-enforcement issue. The OpenAI key has been rotated, and there’s no sign of any problems with any of my other (non-OpenAI) API keys.
I have three open support cases (07476191, 08101086, 08133975), but every response I’ve received has been AI-assisted or an automated case summary. The cases have been “escalated to a specialist” twice, but no human has actually looked at the substance.
Is there any path to getting an actual human on the account side to review this? I’m a big fan of OpenAI and genuinely just want to resolve this and get back to building. Any guidance from folks who’ve navigated something similar would be really appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
Welcome to the forum!
I’m sharing few tips here based on my own experiences and what I’ve read here multiple times. Look if here’s anything you haven’t yet done.
Firstly, since you already have multiple support tickets open, I’d probably avoid opening more duplicate tickets and instead try to keep one case active with a very concise escalation summary.
These are my suggestions:
- account/org/project affected
- negative credit amount
- dates of the reversed charges
- usage report screenshots
- confirmation that the API key was rotated
- the existing support case IDs
- clear request, something like: “Please escalate this to billing/account review, because API access is still blocked after the card charges were reversed.”
Hopefully this helps a little. I understand how frustrating these situations can be.
Sometimes OpenAI staff/support also reply here on the forum and may be able to give better instructions on how to move forward with an existing support ticket, tho of course that is not something I can promise.
Hey @AT-Switchback, totally get why this has been frustrating, especially after a month of mostly automated responses. Also wanted to acknowledge @LarisaHaster for sharing really helpful info earlier in the thread.
From what you described, this usually happens when auto-recharge is enabled and usage continues beyond prepaid credits. The confusing part is that the Budget Limit is more of an alert threshold than a hard cap, so usage can still continue under pay-as-you-go billing instead of stopping automatically.
It does look like your case is already in the specialist review queue, though the backlog may be making response times longer than expected. One thing that may help: keep only one active support case open, since multiple tickets can sometimes slow routing/review down internally.
Hopefully you get a proper human review soon and can get back to building.
-Mark G.
Dear Mark and Larisa,
Thank you for your support and for acknowledging the frustration caused by this situation.
I would like to suggest a process improvement for these scenarios. I recommend that OpenAI considers suspending negative balances and allowing users to maintain a positive balance for future work while a case is being resolved. Which would parallel the typical credit card charge dispute process. Suspending a user’s access for an extended period—especially after OpenAI has already reversed the associated charges—is counterproductive for both parties. In many industries, such a lengthy suspension simply encourages customers to try out competitors.
Dan