Tried to buy pro in 200$, got ~250$ bill. Help me out?

Codex
1

Hi guys.

Last month I experimented with 100$ chatgpt pro account next to my anthropic’s Claude code 200$.

I was really surprised. It went very well.

I wanted to cancel my anthropic’s subscription and to move full on to codex 200$.

Upon check out, I saw I had to pay 310 NIS for pro 100$ (comes out 110$) OR 700 NIS for pro 200$ (comes out 250$).

At that time, conversion from usd to NIS was 2.8. now it’s 2.9.

Needless to say, Anthropic allows me to pay in usd so 200$ is 200$ + credit card conversion rates which comes out less than 1%. They are using the same stripe/link provider as you.

You don’t need a sharp eye to see that 700 is not 310 times 2.

The response I got from chatgpt support was: you are on mobile subscription. Cancel that, get a partial refund and then move to chatgpt web and sign up there.

So I did.

And it turns out, chatgpt web wouldn’t allow me to pay in usd as well.

I tried multiple times contacting support but all I got is “human” answering me auto response. Nobody looked.

So I’m surfacing that here. For 2 weeks already I’m trying to sign up to chatgpt or find someone to respond to me, but I want the 200$ deal, like anthropic, I don’t want to be forced to pay such massive conversion rates.

Please help me out. I decided to stick to anthropic for this month but I would love to try it out when the pricing would become logical - I don’t see why I have to pay 50$ for currency conversion fees when the direct competitor simply won’t have me go through this.

Hope that here I wouldn’t get “human” auto response and someone would actually look at it

Thanks

Nissim

2

I’m not sure if this might help, but if you use Android, you can subscribe through the Play Store via the ChatGPT app. Sometimes it offers better localized pricing, so you can pay in your local currency instead of relying on a direct conversion which adds other taxes.

3

You may be able to open an account with Revolut or Wise and if so you may be able to pay in dollars explicitly with their payment cards and in any case use their excellent conversion rates instead of the rubbish rates you get with most banks or credit cards.

4

Hi and welcome to the community @NissimC!

This OpenAI help article may be relevant for you to check if you already haven’t:

https://help.openai.com/en/articles/10421635-multicurrency-billing

One important note in the article is that it applies to subscriptions purchased from chatgpt.com on web. If the subscription is made through the ChatGPT app on iOS or Android, then the subscription is managed by Apple App Store or Google Play and charges appear in the local currency. Like already mentioned above.

I looked at my own plan, so this is just my example and hopefully a bit helpful for you.

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InSweden through the iOS app/ Apple App Store, ChatGPT Plus is shown to me as 249 SEK/month. Using a rough conversion rate, that is about $26 USD, even though the web/base Plus price is listed as $20/month.

So the final amount may depend on whether the checkout is through web, iOS or Android, plus localized pricing, taxes/VAT, app-store pricing and rounding.

5

Thank you but I fear I was misunderstood.

I already unsubscribed from google pay and tried to resubscribe in the chatgpt web

Chatgpt web doesn’t have an option to be billed in usd

It seems like openai is forcing me to use local currency which the conversion rates are absurd (who heard of 25% currency conversion rates? This is wild).

The multi currency option is documented but inaccessible - there is nowhere on the webapp (mobile web or desktop web) any option. I tried all of them, multiple times, and retried now.

It’s probably a bug if an option to be billed in usd exists on chatgpt web and isn’t available.

Otherwise, I would stress this as a feature request - I shouldn’t be paying 250$ for 200$ subscription because a middle men decided he needs 25% conversion rate. Mastercard charges me a fraction of %, it’s not clear why am I not able to use my Mastercard directly.

6

Is the difference explained by sales tax?

The number 25% is suspicious:

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7

I may be misunderstanding, but I don’t think the multi-currency article necessarily means there is a manual option to choose USD at checkout.

From how I read it, OpenAI uses localized pricing for ChatGPT subscriptions on web where supported and the checkout may show the local currency based on region/account/payment details. (Screenshot from the article I linked above)

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In that case, yes, it may be worth framing this as a feature request for Support, especially if there is no option on web checkout to choose USD billing directly. That said, I’m not sure whether the available checkout currency is determined by OpenAI, the payment processor, region/account settings, tax rules or a combination of those. Support would probably need to clarify what applies in your case.