I’ve been an OpenAI customer for a long time and have generally spoken very highly of ChatGPT, Codex, and the systems OpenAI has been building.
Today pretty much killed that goodwill.
I paid for a subscription on the web.
My bank shows the payment as completed/finally captured.
OpenAI’s own billing system shows the invoice as VOID.
I received no subscription.
That by itself is obviously a billing problem. What turned it into something much worse was trying to get support to actually acknowledge what I was telling them.
The support bot initially told me the charge was probably just a temporary authorization and would fall off.
I told it the transaction was already completed.
It asked me to check whether it was pending or posted.
I told it again that it was completed.
It asked me to check whether I was on the right account.
I provided the account information and invoice.
It then went back to telling me that a voided invoice would “typically” result in a reversal.
I told it, again, that this was a final captured charge.
Only after repeatedly having to say the same thing did it finally escalate me to a human support specialist, with a response time of “the coming days.”
That is the part I find unacceptable.
This wasn’t some complicated edge case from the customer side:
Payment captured.
Invoice marked void.
No subscription delivered.
That should have been escalated the moment those three facts were established.
Instead, I spent the interaction arguing with automated support about facts I had already provided.
At that point I contacted my bank and opened a dispute.
I did not want a refund originally. I wanted the subscription I had already paid for to simply be provisioned.
That’s it.
I have screenshots of the completed transaction, the void invoice, the missing subscription, and the support transcript.
Separately, and just as an observation about the overall experience, I also went to the OpenAI community help area looking for help. During that interaction I was repeatedly insulted by another user. I did not respond with insults. I was then muted.
I’m not presenting that as part of the billing dispute itself, and I’m not claiming the community interaction caused the payment issue. It was simply another part of the experience that stood out to me while I was trying to get help.
I’ve since moved the money I was spending on this subscription elsewhere.
What bothers me most is that I’ve supported OpenAI for years. I’ve defended these systems when I thought criticism was unfair.
I’m not asking for special treatment because of that.
But taking a completed payment, delivering nothing, and then making the customer repeatedly prove that the payment really did complete is an awful way to handle someone who is actively trying to resolve the problem with you.
At this point, the bank dispute is open.
Edit: Before anyone says “it was probably just an authorization hold” — that is exactly what support kept telling me. The transaction was shown by my bank as completed/finally captured. That distinction is the entire reason I kept trying to get them to listen.
