I get an error saying “Your organization is not eligible for arrears billing. Please contact us through our help center at help.openai.com” when trying to a card to start a payment plan/add prepaid credits. These cards all definitely work.
I’ve been going in circles for more than two weeks with support trying pay for my api usage with zero progress. Seems they either do not actually read my message or I am just speaking to a chatbot because the responses seem to repeat and are not accurate to the issue arrears issue I explain above.
Just wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience and maybe has resolved the “arrears” billing issue? Would really like to resolve as this has brought my application to a deadstop and users cannot use it.
The developer forum is unable to influence or make changes to accounts, you should use the help.openai.com site to register your issue to move forwards.
Having said that, and you must understand there is nothing anyone here can do, you need to make sure that the credit card used as a payment method for your account is one that is accepted by Stripe, it must also have the exact details of the account holder, i.e. name, address must be identical to that on both the CC and the OpenAI account, and it must also be issued from a supported country and it must also accept repeat automated billing (some don’t).
Once that has been done you may be able to be updated to a pay monthly account, however, to the best of my knowledge, there is currently no official standard way of requesting a change from the pre pay credit account to the pay monthly. The last I knew it was being looked into and will be an option in the future.
Arrears billing is the older API account style up to a month ago. Anyone that had put a payment method in before that point was enrolled to get a monthly invoice, with usage that could go up to a monthly limit.
Around the end of August, this was changed with no fanfare (and few fans) to a credit prepurchase system if you hadn’t already put in a payment method. One now has to “start payment plan”, put in a credit card, and then purchase credit that can be applied to API services.
Somehow you are caught in the middle where you are seen as attempting to enroll in the monthly billing, and can’t, because you are a new account (and shouldn’t even be offered the choice).
At the billing overview page (with the several icons below), do you have the words “Start payment plan”? Do you have “cancel payment plan”. The words like “you are in monthly billing” below “pay-as-you-go”? An account balance showing? This may give you an idea if you can clear out everything card-related from all parts of the payment system to get back to the “start payment plan” and enroll in credit purchase.
I see “Start a payment plan” on my billing overview page and nothing in billing history and there are no payment methods added (screenshots below).
I should also note that we had a grant which expired on August 1 that we were using and the plan was to add a payment card as soon as that expired. We unfortunately though have not been able to.
Also all the cards we tried are definitely accepted by Stripe. We have checked this several times.
If this is the case and I do not see “cancel payment plan” and no cards have been added how could I clear out everything? I do not even see an option to delete my account.
If your account is showing “start payment plan”, then that should be your gateway.
Review preferences to ensure billing address and all details are filled and match card.
Click to start plan
Pick individual account
Enter credit card
Purchase $5+ in account credit.
Wait a little bit for the purchase to actually process (even though you see credit remaining now)
Go to API playground and chat with a model to test.
If you can’t follow that path without an unexpected error, than you can contact help.openai.com via a message to have the account status corrected.
Another option for a messed-up account is to start an API plan with the second account allowed per phone number, using a different email address to sign in.
Thanks for the clarification and yes we tried to follow that path and as soon as we input any valid credit card we get the “arrears” error and cannot do anything further nor do any credits seem to get purchased.
At this point almost a month since contacting support and they don’t seem to be very responsive nor helpful.
Looks like we will have no other choice but to start a second account with a non primary email.
