Expired credits and auto-recharge

API Bugs
1

If you have auto-recharge set up, and your old credits expire, does it automatically top you up? I think that’s what happened in my account.

I would argue this behavior is a bug! If somebody has no API usage for so long that the credits expire, they probably don’t intend to buy new ones.

2

Hi thanks for taking the time to lfag this.

Did you get charged a montary amount or was it just a $0 account still alive check?

3

I was charged $22 USD. (the rest of this is to make the 25 char limit)

4

Ok, thanks for that. I’ve added the escalation tag to this post, and I will ask the question of OpenAI.

5

That’s what has happened before to a specific forum member that came here to report.

  • A disused OpenAI account, with a payment method on file, still had a credit balance.
  • OpenAI expired that idle balance after a year and kept it.
  • The recharge mechanism recognized the balance was below the threshold set, and filled it back up with a new purchase of credits that was undesired, to replace what was purloined.

Thus working as expected only if you know the system.

I suggested requesting a refund for the automatic and unexpected charge, but didn’t hear the final disposition.

How many abandoned accounts are going to be sending OpenAI more money annually?

More of an issue:

  • we don’t know if recharge actually works or is going to be reliable; I’ve advised before “seems disabled” despite the UI, based on many anecdotes;
  • it has gone nuts, precipitated by backend failures in balance retrieval, recharging and recharging repeatedly despite a funded account.

To where the default answer must be “don’t trust it; turn it off”.

The ideal would be a recharge: only with balance decreasing by usage.

6

Hi everyone!

I can definitely see how this behavior could catch users off guard. Right now, if auto-recharge is on, the system treats expired credits just like running out of balance. As soon as your credits expire and your balance dips below your set minimum, it’ll automatically add your usual refill amount (up to your set limit) to top you back up.

If you’d rather avoid that in the future, you can switch off auto-recharge in your billing settings before your credits expire. And if this charge wasn’t what you wanted, just drop a note to support@openai.com and the team can check things out and help with a refund if it’s eligible.

@jack_lin1, let me know if you’ve already contacted support@openai.com and I can track down the ticket to help!

I'll also share this feedback with the team (expired credits should trigger different behavior than a true below-minimum balance).

Thanks all.

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7

(expired credits should trigger different behavior than a true below-minimum balance)

Well, yeah…

8

I don’t think there is any factual dispute about what has happened; however my case with support@openai.com hasn’t resulted in any refund so far. Quite possibly I’m still stuck at the ‘talking to chatgpt’ phase of support. @OpenAI_Support Can you look into it?

9

refunded. --------------------

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