Me too. I hope the $4 they gained was worth more than the hundreds or thousands I could have potentially spent in the future if they hadn't deliberately alienated me.
That’s pretty common. While I agree it’s not ideal for users, having credits that never expire is a headache for businesses. They’d effectively owe you compute forever, which complicates accounting. It also makes pricing changes harder, since people could keep using credits they bought at much lower prices. And, of course, if credits expire before they’re used, the company ends up keeping the money without having to provide the service. At least OpenAI shows you the expiration of your credits pretty easily...
Not equivalent because the product purchased hasn’t yet been redeemed in the case of the credits. The equivalent would be buying a gift card from a grocery store and then the store saying you can’t use the card because it expired.
Your argument is complete nonsense, considering that numerous services, e.g. Uber, Lyft, GrubHub, DoorDash etc. have purchased gift card credits that never expire. If these were to expire, it would be a clear case of theft. Your comment is an attempt at covering up fraud.
I had this too, brought some credits (around $50USD) around Christmas time and only used a small amount, went to look the other day and it showed me a balance of zero, also couldn't figure out what happened to them
Small enough amount of money that I didn't bother chasing it up, but surprising to see other people saying the same thing, maybe I will
Some time ago I found out that OpenAI API balance gets wiped out after a year. Still bitter about it, telecom operator shit and it’s giving me the creeps when sama talks about AI being like an utility. Good luck.
They need better clairty on it for sure, ideally with a clear warning on deposit. But apparently a non-expiring credit is a considered an accounting problem since you have income (deposit) associated with a contract liability (credits) that could end up making a headache if it splays across a bunch of fiscal years.
You can setup limits though to minimize loss. For example you can say auto reload $5 when your account hits $5 with an absolute monthly limit of $40. Then you don't have risk of losing more than the roughly ~$5 you have in an account.
Many US states don’t allow gift cards to expire. Companies still sell gift cards there. It may be an accounting problem but clearly it can be dealt with. Of course they’d rather steal your money than deal with it.
Still heavily subsidized, you should be thankful they let you use a bit of their compute.
> July 9. My Codex balance - 491.8 credits - vanished to zero.
Well, someone failed a couple of RAFT cornercases. Happens. They are smart boys and will (eventually) make their RAFT consistent.
> Then I asked one simple question: what exactly did I pay for?
You financed development of AGI which will be here soon (er or later) and will make you happy.
> If you prepay OpenAI for credits, know this: if they ever disappear, the company’s official position is that you are not entitled to know where they went.
It very well might be they also have no idea. In a multi-trillion industry your personal signal is just some noise well below noise level.
Also, if you are unhappy with OpenAI - try Anthropic and don't be surprised when you waste $200 in API credits in TWO single requests (not prompts). If you are not happy with Anthropic - give Kimi a try, they still could surprise you even after Anthropic.
OpenRouter expired my credits because they were "too old" (more than 12 months old). Didn't realize credits would rot like that.
Anthropic does that as well. I lost $200, so I now I pay as I go and don't worry about "sales"
OpenRouter does that too? What kind of dystopia we got in.
Me too. I hope the $4 they gained was worth more than the hundreds or thousands I could have potentially spent in the future if they hadn't deliberately alienated me.
I wonder in how many places this is just flat-out illegal.
must've been organic, non-gmo credits
That’s pretty common. While I agree it’s not ideal for users, having credits that never expire is a headache for businesses. They’d effectively owe you compute forever, which complicates accounting. It also makes pricing changes harder, since people could keep using credits they bought at much lower prices. And, of course, if credits expire before they’re used, the company ends up keeping the money without having to provide the service. At least OpenAI shows you the expiration of your credits pretty easily...
They should do refunds if they don’t like holding it.
"Not ideal for users" is a fun way to describe what is essentially theft.
If you buy groceries and let them expire in your fridge because you forgot to use them, did the grocery store stole the money from you?
Did the store make the groceries expire?
Not equivalent because the product purchased hasn’t yet been redeemed in the case of the credits. The equivalent would be buying a gift card from a grocery store and then the store saying you can’t use the card because it expired.
False equivalence fallacy
Did the credits rot? What if the store came to your house and took the vegetables away? Is that theft?
Headache is just an excuse. Accounting for uncollectible receivables and their inverse has a standard accounting practice.
Your argument is complete nonsense, considering that numerous services, e.g. Uber, Lyft, GrubHub, DoorDash etc. have purchased gift card credits that never expire. If these were to expire, it would be a clear case of theft. Your comment is an attempt at covering up fraud.
This is just LLM output pasted on some forum, submitted to HN by the person who presumably made that post. What an incredibly low effort submission.
Who cares, flag and move on rather than shit up the comment section with fatuous complaining about eFfORt.
I had this too, brought some credits (around $50USD) around Christmas time and only used a small amount, went to look the other day and it showed me a balance of zero, also couldn't figure out what happened to them
Small enough amount of money that I didn't bother chasing it up, but surprising to see other people saying the same thing, maybe I will
[dead]
file a ccpa data access request, they either have data to backup the usage (and must release it) or they don't have it (and should fix the issue)
Note that credits can also be consumed by theft of the API key, not only by expiration.
Some time ago I found out that OpenAI API balance gets wiped out after a year. Still bitter about it, telecom operator shit and it’s giving me the creeps when sama talks about AI being like an utility. Good luck.
They need better clairty on it for sure, ideally with a clear warning on deposit. But apparently a non-expiring credit is a considered an accounting problem since you have income (deposit) associated with a contract liability (credits) that could end up making a headache if it splays across a bunch of fiscal years.
You can setup limits though to minimize loss. For example you can say auto reload $5 when your account hits $5 with an absolute monthly limit of $40. Then you don't have risk of losing more than the roughly ~$5 you have in an account.
how convenient that they are solving their accounting problems with taking away your money instead of doing a refund.
I mean it could be problematic if taxes and the credit card fees are involved right.
It would be interesting to see something like:
$100 credits and $13 in taxes refunded as
$97 in refund after merchent fee + $12.61 as reversed taxes.
It's objectively better than nothing for sure. But the thing about this is such complicated nuanced solutions tend to get not done.
Many US states don’t allow gift cards to expire. Companies still sell gift cards there. It may be an accounting problem but clearly it can be dealt with. Of course they’d rather steal your money than deal with it.
> I was a happy OpenAI customer.
Do they care?
> $379 spent on credits in July alone
Still heavily subsidized, you should be thankful they let you use a bit of their compute.
> July 9. My Codex balance - 491.8 credits - vanished to zero.
Well, someone failed a couple of RAFT cornercases. Happens. They are smart boys and will (eventually) make their RAFT consistent.
> Then I asked one simple question: what exactly did I pay for?
You financed development of AGI which will be here soon (er or later) and will make you happy.
> If you prepay OpenAI for credits, know this: if they ever disappear, the company’s official position is that you are not entitled to know where they went.
It very well might be they also have no idea. In a multi-trillion industry your personal signal is just some noise well below noise level.
Also, if you are unhappy with OpenAI - try Anthropic and don't be surprised when you waste $200 in API credits in TWO single requests (not prompts). If you are not happy with Anthropic - give Kimi a try, they still could surprise you even after Anthropic.