Billing nightmare - where are the humans at OpenAI support?

[ben_in_wellington]

Hi everyone,

I don’t know what to do and really need some help or advice. In particular, I’m desperate to communicate with a human at OpenAI about a continuing billing nightmare but I can’t get past the email bots on OpenAI’s email support.

For context, I’m running an API account with billing enabled on a monthly cycle. Payments for the month prior are processed on the second day of each month. We are running anywhere from $50 to $200 per month in costs and have done so for over two years with no problems.

Two days ago OpenAI suddenly charged the bank account three times, totalling over $1,100 USD.

Accompanying these transactions are three invoices in the dashboard that suggest usage that is clearly unrelated to the current month’s actual usage.

Not only have three out-of-cycle invoices been issued and three payments triggered against the card on the same day, OpenAI has been spamming me with more than 20 automated emails associated with these three out-of-cycle invoices, with a mix of email invoices and refund/credit notices. As it stands, however, I have a bank account with $1k+ missing without explanation.

I’ve been trying to communicate with OpenAI’s customer support for two days now and I keep asking to be escalated to a human but I can’t get past the next bot replying with a soothing email that is confused and doesn’t explain what’s going on. In fact, the last email I received claimed that these payments were legitimate based on actual usage, which is absurd. There’s absolutely no sign of a usage surge in the dashboard and the email does nothing to explain what’s going on or why I’m getting spammed with invoices and credits repeatedly.

As it stands, I’m terrified of continuing to use the API and at my wits end trying to get something out of OpenAI. Obviously I’ve had to revoke all API keys which is another headache as all services running are forced to halt until this gets resolved.

I’ve been a loyal customer for two years and to have this happen all of a sudden just sucks

Any help would be appreciated.

Ben

[mat.eo]

There’s another thread with the same circumstances.

Looks like they updated their billing systems, inadvertently re-billing people numerous times

@ben_in_wellington

Obviously I’ve had to revoke all API keys which is another headache as all services running are forced to halt until this gets resolved.

I’d recommend using a different service that doesn’t require biometrics, and has a more stable billing system. There are numerous out there that support GPT models

[vb]

This issue has been resolved.
In case of any questions, please follow-up in the topic linked below.

I have been charged 3 times for the same month of January

Thanks for flagging this and for your patience! On January 28, a VAT correction process caused some invoices to briefly appear duplicated. Engineering identified the issue and have now refunded all affected invoices. If you were impacted, no action is required on your end. If you are still seeing unexpected charges after this update, please contact support with your invoice number and we’d be happy to take a look.