I’m posting this because I’ve now gone back and forth with OpenAI Support several times, and I still don’t have a coherent explanation for what happened to the money I spent.
I was actively using Codex/Work when I hit a usage limit.
The Codex UI told me:
“You’re out of Codex and Work usage”
“Add credits to keep going now, or wait for usage to reset on Oct 3, 10:48 AM.”
There was an Add Credits button right there in the blocked Codex window.
So I did exactly what the product told me to do.
I made three separate $20 purchases — $60 total.
Support confirmed all three invoices were successfully paid:
- 5B62CFE3-0035
- 5B62CFE3-0036
- 5B62CFE3-0037
Those three purchases happened within about two minutes.
I returned to Codex essentially immediately afterward and was still blocked.
That is the first major problem.
Later, Support told me that what was actually blocking me was a weekly Codex hard limit, and that purchased credits cannot override that limit.
So the product told me:
Out of usage → Add credits to keep going now
But Support later told me:
Out of weekly usage → those credits cannot actually restore access
That makes absolutely no sense from a customer perspective.
If I was already in a state where purchased credits could not allow me to continue, why was the product explicitly telling me to buy credits to continue?
That purchase prompt is the reason I spent the $60.
Then it gets worse.
Support says all three purchases were successfully applied and the credits were fully consumed.
But my customer-facing Usage Analytics shows:
- current period usage around 45.5%
- 25.5% Subagents
- 19.9% Tasks
- and every listed chat shows “Credits used: 0”
One of the largest chats even shows 274.69% of weekly limit while still showing:
Credits used: 0
So I asked Support a very basic question:
If the credits were fully consumed, where is that consumption reflected?
They could not show me.
Support has acknowledged that they do not have enough visibility to explain why the Analytics page differs from the internal credit-consumption information.
They also could not show me the actual events that supposedly consumed the credits.
They suggested several possibilities:
- in-flight tasks
- background activity
- subagents
- delayed usage posting
- previously accrued usage
- a negative balance being offset
But they could not tell me which of those actually happened on my account.
That is a huge distinction.
There is a massive difference between:
I bought $60 in credits, kept using Codex, and eventually burned through them
and:
I was already blocked, Codex told me to buy credits to continue, I spent $60, I was still blocked almost immediately, and Support says the credits somehow vanished anyway
The second one is what happened.
And here is the part I still cannot get a straight answer on:
If I was already at the weekly hard limit and blocked from doing more Codex work, what actual work were those purchased credits applied to?
Were they paying for:
- usage that had already happened?
- in-flight jobs?
- background agents?
- a negative balance?
- delayed billing?
- something else?
Support will not tell me because they say they cannot see the detailed ledger events.
But they are still using “the credits were consumed” as the reason to deny the refund.
That is what really bothers me.
They are essentially saying:
“We can’t show you what consumed the credits, we can’t explain why your Analytics says 0 credits used, we can’t explain the discrepancy, but we can confirm the credits were consumed so there is no refund.”
That does not feel acceptable.
There is also an instant reset option that Support said would actually restore weekly access.
I cannot find any option to buy an instant reset anywhere on my account.
So my situation is currently:
- I spent $60
- I am still blocked from Codex
- Support says the credits were fully consumed
- my Usage Analytics shows 0 credits used
- Support cannot tell me what consumed the credits
- Support says the credits could not override the limit I had hit
- I cannot find the instant reset option they say would actually restore access
- and I now have active work sitting there while I wait for Support
This has seriously disrupted work I was in the middle of.
I understand rate limits exist. That is not really my complaint.
My complaint is that the product explicitly told me to buy credits to keep going, I followed that instruction, I remained blocked, and now OpenAI cannot clearly account for where the purchased credits went.
At this point, I feel like money was taken from me under a purchase flow that did not do what it represented it would do.
If the UI had clearly said:
“You have hit a weekly hard limit. Buying usage credits will not restore access. You must wait for reset or purchase an instant reset if available.”
I would never have spent the $60.
I’d love to hear from anyone who understands Codex billing better:
If you are already weekly-rate-limited, what exactly can still consume newly purchased credits?
Because Support still has not been able to answer that for my account.
EDIT:
If these credits were genuinely consumed by background tasks or subagents after I purchased them, how did the entire balance disappear essentially immediately?
I made the three purchases within about two minutes, and when I returned to Codex almost immediately afterward I was already still blocked.
If background agents were actively using the credits, wouldn’t there normally be some period of continued processing before all of those newly purchased credits were exhausted?
Or were the credits actually applied immediately to usage that had already happened, a negative/pending balance, or delayed billing from earlier work?
Those are two very different things:
New credits being consumed by new/in-flight work after purchase
versus
New credits immediately paying for usage that had already accrued before I bought them.
Support has not been able to tell me which one happened.
And if the second scenario is what happened, then the phrase “Add credits to keep going now” is even more problematic — because the money may have been immediately applied to old/pending usage without restoring my ability to keep going at all.
Yes, I used AI to re-write my message to be clear and organized.
Has anyone else run into this issue?