OpenAI Unethical Billing Practices
I had a $100 budget/month set on my OpenAI API organization. Despite that, OpenAI billed me almost $200. I had signed up for ChatGPT Pro and tried using the Codex App, but it was painfully slow/causing my computer to crash, so I switched to the Codex CLI. I did not realize it was still reading from my API key and not signed into ChatGPT, and I incurred almost $200 in API bills.
I contacted OpenAI support and they refused to offer me any sort of refund or credit, even after reaching a human and multiple attempts. This seems really unethical: OpenAI provides no way to stop runaway API billing, and they refuse to refund customers who exceed their defined budget.
The "budget" system does not actually stop spending, so it's entirely pointless. After searching extensively through the OpenAI API platform and documentation I see no way to limit your API spending.
This is on top of me contacting them asking for a refund of ChatGPT Pro subscription a couple months ago after we had a newborn and I was unable to use it for that month. I forgot to cancel the auto-renew, but contacted them the same day of the renewal. They absolutely refused to give me any sort of refund. I've never had an organization refuse to refund subscriptions before when it was accidentally renewed. So I'm out $400 now, thanks openai.