Freeing up a phone number "slot" for a new work account

I have two personal accounts with OpenAI. One I use, and one I don’t really (made with an alternate email, not sure why I did this).

Now I can’t create a new account for work because “My Phone Number is tied to too many accounts”. I would really prefer just to delete my unused personal account to free up that phone number “slot”. But I see messages on the forum here that this will not really work, and the phone number will still be tied up. Is it possible to get some support on this issue? It’s blocking my work usage of the API. AFAIK my accounts are in good standing and have never been banned or had any issues.

10 Likes

I got the same issue…
I want to use my company account but got “My Phone Number is tied to too many accounts” with my phone.
please help :cry:

1 Like

Same issue here. I’m so excited to get a proper account setup. Now I’m stuck.

Same issue. I need to be able to verify a new account with the one phone number I have. I then want to close the current account. I can’t verify the new one since my phone number is tied to the existing account.

Why is no one answering this? I even sent an email to support days ago. I have gotten no response.

Related posts

Apparently, I am not the only one that has not got any support, help or answer from OpenAI. It’s been more than one month, and no answer. The support chat finally opened yesterday for me, after not loading for weeks, which made it unusable, I got an answer from the bot that I will get support later today (i.e. yesterday), and I got no answer yesterday or today, and I will probably not get an answer in the next year.

Same issue here. Had one personal account and one work account. After deleting my old work account I get stuck on the creation of the new work account for having used the phone number too many times.

This phone number is already linked to the maximum number of accounts.

Easiest to just get an extra phone number?

My situation is slightly reversed. I have created an account using my work email and my own phone number. As I was leaving my company and will be losing access to my email I went ahead to delete my account, but soon I realised that I could not use the same number with a new email address. Although I can still access ChatGPT using my second associated private email, I would like to be able to “free up” this slot so that I can use it with my new work email address.

I opened an account linked to my personal email and phone then decided to delete it as I want to use it on my work laptop. I don’t have a company phone and even though I deleted the account I cannot open a new one linked to my work email because when I try to verify my phone number I get “This phone number is already linked to the maximum number of accounts.”. Pretty dumb

Yes, same issue. Was messing around with ChatGPT, used placeholder names, phone number, etc., and after playing with this I want to use a paid account with my business. But… can’t. Can’t change placeholder names, can’t create a new account (has to be a mobile # and I’m not getting a new one just for this). Now I have 2 silly placeholder names and am unable to change any information or “clean it up” for my business. Not a great business model, guys.

1 Like

Seems the AI wants to prove that it is not dangerous by playing dumb and bungling any kind of connection to the physical world :wink: JK, same Problem here - dear OpenAI Team, pls fix asap.

The issue still exists in June; I had a personal account using my phone number and cannot create a work account because ‘This phone number is already linked to the maximum number of accounts’.

2 Likes

same issue here. OpenAI team on thoughts on this? I even deleted one of my personal accounts to make room.

1 Like

thanks everyone, seems like we’re all in the same boat. maybe Sam Altman should take a little time out of his busy schedule lobbying for a regulatory monopoly and tell one of his brilliant engineers to take a look at basic customer service.

1 Like

Or maybe you just get another additional phone number with a cheap used smartphone (sounds like a <50$ solution)?

Same problem for me today. I didn’t realize I had two personal accounts, but this is making me think I do. I have a personal account and I thought just one work account. But I can’t login and it’s blocking based on phone number being tied up in other accounts …

2 Likes

Same. Beyond ridiculous that there is this type of limit.

Same here. Just adding to the tally. The real number of affected is likely in the thousands.

1 Like

Why is this a thing. I have never run into this limitation in my life. Tried to create a shared account, tied to my phone in order for authentication. Oh great, I can create an individual account now. I may have created and then deleted an account with a similar domain. And I guess I can’t re-create my other account that I deleted? Noice.

Welcome to the developer forum!,

For account related issues please use OpenAI Help Centre in the bottom right corner is a message icon. image click the icon and enter your issue, the bot will take your details and a member of the account support team will get back to you, it may take several weeks due to the number of people currently using the system.

1 Like

Thanks for pointing that out. I don’t know why openai does it this way, but I am quiet sure that is not a random act of evil.
Pretty sure there is a very good reason behind that.

But still thanks for pointing that out, so others don’t fall into the same trap!