I’ve had a strange week with ChatGPT and so I am writing this to remind us all not to get too close to your AI tools.
I’ll share some strange charges and examples of hot and cold support, and then note how AI tools can’t afford to take us for granted because there is a lot of competition. The final point will be for us to keep our brains and engagement levels active, and to not become complacent relying on one tool or one process for everything.
The Misunderstood Fake AI Robbery
Earlier this week, I received a strange email from OpenAI (the company that owns ChatGPT), announcing that my “OpenAI API account has been funded”.
They had charged my credit card US$10. So I went to ChatGPT support and explained all, getting this reply:
Thank you for sharing those details! Here’s what likely happened:
- ChatGPT Plus ($20/month) is separate from purchases for API credits.
- The $10 charge you received and the message about credits were for the OpenAI API—not your ChatGPT Plus subscription.
- This can happen if you, or someone with access to your OpenAI account, used an API product or enabled “auto-recharge” for API credits. API usage is billed separately from ChatGPT Plus, even if you subscribe to both.
What to do next:
- Visit the OpenAI billing portal to review your API charges and manage credit/top-up settings.
- If you didn’t intend to purchase API credits or didn’t use the API, it’s recommended you change your password and review account security.
- If the charge was unauthorized, let me know if you’d like to request a refund or investigate further. I can help start the process for you.
Would you like help with managing API billing, securing your account, or requesting a refund for this API credit charge?
To cut a long story short, I discovered I had an AI Chat experiement set up a year ago, used for a week or two, and somehow that had trickled away, using the API and tipping into the US$5 amount, triggering the fund top up. When I explained it had rarely been used and I had now deleted it, I was told this:
You have been granted a prorated refund based on your usage. Your active subscription has been cancelled. The refund will show up in your bank statement within 10 days.
I call that a happy ending. That was, until yesterday, just a few days later.
The True Robbery Committed By ChatGPT
I was working in ChatGPT and wanted to find my original Custom GPT instructions in my account. However, although they still appeared in the left hand menu, there were no GPTs available via the top right menu.
I then saw, bottom left, that my account was deemed a Free account, not Plus. So, back to ChatGPT help.
I paid AU$31.87 on August 21, using AMEX. I should have an active paid account. On september 2, you sent me a bill for API access which I cancelled and was refunded. But I should still have an active Plus account. ChatGPT5 said to me: That points strongly to a billing glitch on OpenAI’s side, not an account mix-up: Since you were successfully charged on 21 August, your Plus should still be active until around 21 September. The API refund shouldn’t affect your ChatGPT Plus status, but it looks like your account got downgraded in error when the API subscription was cancelled. That would explain why you can’t see the Billing tab anymore and why it’s reporting “Free.”
The assistant said:
Thank you for explaining your situation clearly. Here’s a summary and guidance based on OpenAI’s current billing setup:
- Your payment of AU$31.87 on August 21:
This should cover an active ChatGPT Plus subscription until about September 21. - API refund and subscription:
Canceling and refunding an API-credit purchase should not affect a ChatGPT Plus subscription. The issue you described—a downgrade to a Free plan and the Billing tab disappearing—may happen due to a billing error, but not normally just from an API refund. - Current ChatGPT Plus access:
If you paid for Plus and your account is showing “Free,” your Plus subscription was indeed wrongly removed due to a glitch. This is confirmed by:- A successful Plus payment on August 21.
- Plus access disappearing after the API refund.
- What to do now:
The recommended step in this scenario is to re-subscribe to Plus. Your previous payment (AU$31.87) should have provided access until around September 21. If you’re prompted to pay again, or if your previous Plus payment period is not restored, please let me know so I can help escalate or guide you through reimbursement or reactivation steps.
I got instructions to resubscribe but asked if I would get credit for the payment that is not being honoured with the service paid for. It said, no, you should seek a refund first. Which I did. And this morning received this email:
Thank you for reaching out to OpenAI Support. We’re sorry to hear about the confusion around your recent charges and changes to your subscription status. We appreciate the detailed information you’ve shared—it really helps us understand what happened and how best to support you. To clarify, the ChatGPT Plus subscription and API platform subscription are managed separately, as they operate on different platforms:
- ChatGPT Plus is billed through chat.openai.com and applies specifically to usage within the ChatGPT interface.
- OpenAI API subscriptions, including credit top-ups like the $10 charge you mentioned, are tied to usage through the API platform at platform.openai.com.
Although both services fall under your OpenAI account, billing and subscription statuses for each are handled independently. This means a change or refund on one platform does not normally impact the other. If you would like to restore access to ChatGPT Plus, we recommend resubscribing directly through chat.openai.com by going to Settings > My Plan and following the prompts to upgrade. Thank you again for your patience. We’re here to help and will make sure you’re supported every step of the way.
I have asked for clarification about the refund for money they took without delivering the service. I am yet to get a response.
There Are Plenty Of AI Fish In The Sea
Here’s the dilemma for OpenAI and why it can’t act like a monopolistic juggernaut. You see, this unexpected misbehaviour has given me pause to reflect on what I need the paid plan for, when Claude is the better tool for writing content drafts, NotebookLM does a better job at parsing lots of information, PerplexityAI does a better job at searching the internet, and now Gemini’s new image making tool, Nano Banana, does a great job at image creation.
As I reflected in my reply to OpenAI:
Hi [person’s name], thanks. Will I get a refund for the part of the month I have paid for, for Plus, ahead of resubscribing?
It seems very strange to take money and then reduce the account to Free.
That said, the major role ChatGPT has been fulfilling for me is image creation and transcribing written notes. Now that Nano Banana is here and Gemini is included in my Workspace account, this latest disruption has unexpectedly given me pause to reflect on ChatGPT’s role. It feels weird begging to have what I paid for restored. Do you see what I mean?
That’s my message. When you have a task that could be done better or faster with a little AI help, don’t settle on just one. Play the field.
This is important because there is a commoditisation, of sorts, happening with AI tools, especially LLMs like ChatGPT.
But also, tools can change rules on a dime. So being beholden to any one tool is a suboptimal approach.
For example, I love Claude but its owner, Anthropic, just changed its privacy rules in a manner that opts you in to allow use of your chats for its benefit (for training its model and goodness knows what else), instead of its more pure original approach of having us opted out and allowing us to opt in, should we choose to. That original approach is the ethical one.
Plus, there are disruptions and outages that can occur. Plus, this fast moving field also has pending court cases that could upset the applet carts in a very big way.
Staying Sharp And Human Remembering LLMs Are Tools
At the rist of sounding like a broken record, AI tools always over promise and go heavy with hype. I captured that recently in a song I wrote for my Oscar persona to sing – have a listen to Our Charming Little Robots, in this article.
This approach attracts our baser selves, that part of our brains wired for seeking out novel things and ways of doing things in a lazier style.
Situations like this taking of my money without deliver service, should remind all of us that these tools are not magic genies coming to make life better. These are services made by capitalist businesses focussed on making big profits for investors and striving to achieve monopoly status.
We should make hay while the sun shines but like any decent farmer, keep a weather eye on conditions and market changes and ensure we adapt to maintain our own core abilities and prospects.
PS This article was handwritten by me, well, typed, and the image was made by Nano Banana. Ironically, I asked ChatGPT to draft the meta description, which it did: A Cautionary Tale Of ChatGPT Billing Glitches, AI Competition, And Why We Must Stay Sharp And Not Rely Too Heavily On Any One AI Tool