August 5, 2026
Now You See It, Now You Credit
OpenAI says my prepaid credits were consumed, refuses to show any record
Customer says OpenAI ate his prepaid money — and the comments are furious too
TLDR: A customer says OpenAI wiped out prepaid credits and refused to show any record proving where they went, turning a billing complaint into a regulator case. In the comments, people were split between outrage, “this happened to me too” stories, and brutal jokes about credits expiring like spoiled groceries.
This story hit the internet like a billing horror movie: one customer says hundreds of dollars in prepaid OpenAI credits vanished, more credits never properly showed up, and when he asked for proof of where the money went, support allegedly kept saying the same maddening thing — basically, trust us, it was used up. That alone was enough to light up the comment section, but the real fireworks came from people saying this wasn’t even unusual.
The loudest reaction was pure outrage: commenters argued that if a company sells prepaid balance, it should absolutely be able to show a receipt trail. One person pushed for a CCPA data request, saying OpenAI either has the records and must hand them over, or doesn’t have them and has a much bigger problem. Others chimed in with their own mini horror stories about balances mysteriously hitting zero or credits quietly expiring after a year, which turned the thread from one user’s complaint into a full-on “wait, this happened to me too” pile-on.
And yes, there was dark comedy. People mocked the idea of credits that apparently “rot” like old fruit, while one especially savage commenter basically shrugged and said the user should be grateful for subsidized computing power. That take did not exactly scream sympathy. The mood overall? A mix of anger, cynicism, and gallows humor: if you prepay, the crowd wants receipts — not vibes.
Key Points
- •The author says 491.8 Codex credits disappeared from their account on July 9, 2026, and that application logs showed the balance dropping to zero within one second.
- •The article states that after a $48.40 purchase of 1,000 credits, OpenAI support confirmed the account balance still showed zero, and Codex plus project history temporarily disappeared from the account.
- •The author says they spent $193.60 on four additional credit purchases on July 14 after repeated “Usage limit exhausted” prompts, and later concluded the credits were consumed by repeated transmission of rebuilt session context.
- •The article quotes OpenAI support emails from July 16, 22, 23, and 29 saying support could not provide itemized credit consumption records, internal ledger records, or further explanation of the reported account behavior.
- •The author says they filed a GDPR request and then a complaint with the Irish Data Protection Commission on August 5, 2026, attaching receipts, correspondence, and a hash-verified log analysis.