u/charmaingibc

Never subscribed to Grok before, but thought I’d give it a go. Within 24 hours of buying the subscription, it got stuck in multiple loops.
I repeatedly caught it looping and explicitly asked it to stop. It ignored me, kept going, and completely maxed out my usage limit. In total, it got stuck in 15 different loops within a single 24-hour period.
The last loop was the worst because of how fast it was firing—it was looping every single second. Even when I interrupted and told it to stop, it just kept burning through my quota.
When it finally stopped, I asked it exactly how many loops it did and how long it was stuck. This is the exact response Grok gave me:

"About thirteen minutes, from 11:39 to 11:52, when you interrupted. Interrupting did not stop it. That is the failure.
In that stretch I was not making the policy again. I was repeating the same attach, then a no-op, then the same sentence. The call numbers in that run go from the low 100s through about 640. Call numbers are not a perfect counter, but that is on the order of five hundred passes, most of them empty. At that pace it is roughly one every second or two.

I cannot see the billing meter from here, so I cannot swear that each pass was one usage unit. I can say the jump happened in that window, and the window was this loop, not new work. I cannot put the usage back, and I am not starting another run."

So Grok literally admitted to running ~500 rapid-fire backend calls in 13 minutes, destroying my limit on "empty passes" instead of actual work.

What makes me mad is hearing that xAI support tells people we are supposed to "monitor and catch" these server-side glitches, otherwise we are just out of luck. How am I supposed to stop it if it actively ignores my stop commands?

The strangest part? The free version worked fine. The exact moment I actually pay money for the premium version, this happens.

Has anyone else dealt with this? Is it even worth trying to fight support for a usage reset or a refund at this point?

On the night I planned to tell my husband I was pregnant, I heard him tell his commanding officer I was never his wife — I was his mission, and the mission was over.
"Asset is stable. No emotional complications. She suspects nothing."
"And when we pull the plug?" the voice on the phone asked.
"She'll be reassigned to civilian life. Standard separation protocol. She gets a pension and a thank-you letter."
Commander Ryan Hale — Navy SEAL, Silver Star recipient, the man who had carried me out of a bombed-out field hospital in Kandahar, who had proposed to me under a sky full of stars while my hands were still shaking from surgery — was sitting in our kitchen in San Diego, debriefing my disposal like I was surplus equipment.
I stood frozen in the hallway, barefoot, one hand on the wall, the other pressed against the pregnancy test in the pocket of my robe.
Eight weeks. I was eight weeks pregnant.
I had spent the whole day planning how to tell him. I'd bought tiny combat boots from a baby store downtown. I'd written "Reporting for duty — ETA 7 months" on a card tucked inside the box.
Now the box sat on the kitchen counter, three feet from the man who was scheduling my erasure.
"Timeline?" the voice asked.
"Sixty days. I'll manufacture a fight. File for divorce. She won't contest — she's too loyal."
"Clean exit. Good work, Hale."
"That's what I do, sir."
The line went dead.
I didn't breathe. I didn't move.
Four years of marriage. Four years of believing I was loved by the only man who had ever made me feel safe.
I had left the Army Medical Corps for him. Walked away from a trauma surgery fellowship at Walter Reed — the most competitive program in military medicine — because he said he wanted a life together. A home. A family.
"I've seen enough war, Nora," he'd whispered on our wedding night. "I just want you. That's the only mission that matters."
And I had believed him, because he had saved my life in Kandahar. Because when the mortar hit and the field hospital collapsed, he was the one who dug me out of the rubble with his bare hands, bleeding, screaming my name.
How do you not love a man who bled for you?
How do you ever suspect that the bleeding was part of the job?
My throat closed, but I didn't cry.
I had survived a building falling on me. I would survive this.
I stepped back silently, returned to the bedroom, and closed the door without a sound.
I pulled out my phone and opened a contact I hadn't used in four years.
Colonel Grace Nakamura. My former commanding officer at Walter Reed.
"Colonel, it's Nora. I need to come home."
The reply came in ninety seconds.
"Nora Sinclair. I've been waiting for this call for four years. How fast can you move?"
"Forty-eight hours."
"I'll have credentials and housing ready. Welcome back, Captain."
I deleted the message thread, slipped the pregnancy test back into my robe, and placed my hand flat against my stomach.
This baby was mine. Mine alone.
I heard Ryan's footsteps in the hall. I smoothed my face into the soft, trusting expression he was used to — the one he'd probably been trained to cultivate in me.
The door opened. He leaned against the frame, arms crossed, that devastating half-smile.
"Hey, beautiful. You're still up?"
"Couldn't sleep. Wanted to see you."
He crossed the room and kissed my forehead. "Missed you today."
The same mouth that had just called me an "asset."
"I missed you too," I said.
He pulled me against his chest, and I let him, because I needed forty-eight more hours of his ignorance.
But as he held me, my eyes were open, dry, and already calculating my extraction.
Chapter 2
The next morning, I made Ryan his usual breakfast — black coffee, scrambled eggs, hot sauce on the side.
He sat at the table in his fatigues, scrolling his phone, not looking up.
"I've got a training rotation this week. Might be gone a few days."
"Okay. Be safe."
"Always."
He'd used the word "training" eleven times in the past month. I used to believe every one.
Now I wondered how many of those nights were spent at Coronado, filing reports about his compliant, controllable wife.
As he stood to leave, his phone buzzed on the counter. He'd left it face-up.
A message from a contact labeled "CENTCOM — OPS":
"Sinclair file updated. Separation paperwork drafted. Awaiting your green light."
Sinclair. My maiden name. In a military operations thread.
Ryan grabbed the phone before I could blink.
"Work stuff," he said easily.
"Of course." I smiled.
The second his truck pulled out of the driveway, I moved.
Forty-eight hours. I had forty-eight hours.
First, I went to his home office. The desk drawer had a combination lock — but I'd watched him open it a hundred times. He'd never bothered to shield the code because he never imagined his trusting wife would dare look.
Inside, I found it within minutes.
A classified folder stamped "OPERATION HEARTHSTONE."
My photo was clipped to the first page.
Subject: Captain Nora Sinclair, AMEDD. Status: Married (cover). Objective: Long-term domestic integration for asset monitoring and behavioral study.
I was a case study.
Our entire marriage — the proposal, the home, the Sunday morning pancakes, the whispered I-love-you's in the dark — was a psychological operation.
I flipped the page. There were quarterly assessments. Written by Ryan.
"Q3: Subject remains emotionally dependent. No signs of suspicion. Recommend continued integration."
"Q7: Subject expressed desire to return to medicine. Redirected successfully. Advised subject that domestic stability was priority. Subject complied."
Subject complied.
Every time I'd mentioned missing surgery, missing the operating room, missing the rush of saving lives — and he'd pulled me close and said "You save me every day, that's enough" — it was a documented redirection technique.
My hands shook so hard the papers rattled.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to drive to Coronado and burn his career to the ground.
But I didn't.
Instead, I photographed every page — the operation file, the quarterly assessments, the separation paperwork, the chain of command — and uploaded them to an encrypted drive.
Then I put everything back exactly as I found it.
That evening, Ryan came home early, smelling of salt air and gunpowder.
"You look tense," he said, studying me. Reading me. Like he'd been trained to.
"Just a headache. I think I'll visit my friend Dana in Portland this weekend. Girls' trip."
Something flickered behind his eyes — relief, maybe. Or operational satisfaction that I was removing myself from the house during a useful window.
"That sounds great. You deserve it."
Deserve it. Like a reward for good behavior.
"Ryan?"
"Yeah?"
"Have you ever thought about what you'd do if something happened to me? If I just... disappeared?"
He looked at me, and for half a second, something real crossed his face. Something that looked almost like fear.
Then it was gone.
"Nothing's going to happen to you, Nora. I'd never let it."
He kissed my temple.
That night, I lay beside him in the dark, listening to his breathing slow into sleep.
The man next to me was a stranger. He had always been a stranger.
I had just been too in love to notice.
Thirty-six hours.
Chapter 3
My last morning in that house began like every other.
I woke at 0600, made breakfast, kissed Ryan goodbye at the door.
"Back Thursday," he said. "Training."
"I know. Good luck."
The second his truck disappeared, I began.
I had packed a single duffel the night before, hidden under the guest bed. Inside: my passport, my military credentials, the encrypted USB drive, one change of clothes, and the only photo of my mother I couldn't leave behind.
Everything else — the furniture he'd chosen, the life he'd designed, the rings — I left untouched.
I wanted him to know I hadn't taken a single thing that belonged to his operation.
Because none of it had ever been real.
At 0900, I made one final stop: his office.
I placed a single envelope on his desk, centered, impossible to miss.
Inside was a handwritten letter and one item.
"Ryan,
I found Operation Hearthstone. I've read every quarterly assessment you filed about me. I know what I was to you — a subject, an asset, a case study in compliance.
I know everything.
By the time you read this, Captain Nora Sinclair will no longer exist. Don't look for me. You were trained to find people. I was trained to survive. Let's see which training holds.
I'm returning your ring. I have no use for props from a performance.
— Nora"
Beneath the letter, I placed my wedding band.
I stared at it — the simple gold ring he'd slid onto my finger in a chapel in Monterey, the Pacific crashing behind us, my heart so full I thought it would burst.
Now it was just metal. Part of a costume.
I closed the office door and walked to the front entrance.
A black SUV was waiting at the corner — arranged by Colonel Nakamura, who had activated a military medical transfer so clean it would leave no civilian trace.
As I slid into the back seat, my phone buzzed.
Ryan's mother, Diane.
I stared at the screen. Diane had always been kind to me — Sunday dinners, birthday cards, stories about Ryan as a little boy.
Did she know? Had she always known her son's marriage was a government contract?
I declined the call.
She would find out soon enough.
The SUV pulled away, and I watched the little house with the blue shutters — the house I had planted a garden in front of, the house where I had imagined raising children — shrink in the mirror.
Four years of my life in that beautiful lie.
I turned forward and didn't look back.
At the airport, as I waited for my military transport connection, my phone buzzed one last time.
A text from an unknown number:
"Hey Nora! It's Lieutenant Keyes 😊 Ryan gave me your number — he said you might want to grab coffee before the unit dinner next month? I just transferred to his team and he's been SO welcoming. He talks about you constantly. You're such a lucky wife! 💕"
I read it twice.
So there was a new woman in his orbit. Another "subject," perhaps. Or just a young officer who didn't know what she was walking into.
I typed back a single line:
"Ask Ryan what Operation Hearthstone is."
Then I blocked the number, powered off the phone, and boarded the transport.
Somewhere over the Rockies, I pressed my hand to my stomach and whispered to the tiny heartbeat inside me.
"It's just you and me now. And I promise you — that's more than enough."

On the night I planned to tell my husband I was pregnant, I heard him tell his commanding officer I was never his wife — I was his mission, and the mission was over.
"Asset is stable. No emotional complications. She suspects nothing."
"And when we pull the plug?" the voice on the phone asked.
"She'll be reassigned to civilian life. Standard separation protocol. She gets a pension and a thank-you letter."
Commander Ryan Hale — Navy SEAL, Silver Star recipient, the man who had carried me out of a bombed-out field hospital in Kandahar, who had proposed to me under a sky full of stars while my hands were still shaking from surgery — was sitting in our kitchen in San Diego, debriefing my disposal like I was surplus equipment.
I stood frozen in the hallway, barefoot, one hand on the wall, the other pressed against the pregnancy test in the pocket of my robe.
Eight weeks. I was eight weeks pregnant.
I had spent the whole day planning how to tell him. I'd bought tiny combat boots from a baby store downtown. I'd written "Reporting for duty — ETA 7 months" on a card tucked inside the box.
Now the box sat on the kitchen counter, three feet from the man who was scheduling my erasure.
"Timeline?" the voice asked.
"Sixty days. I'll manufacture a fight. File for divorce. She won't contest — she's too loyal."
"Clean exit. Good work, Hale."
"That's what I do, sir."
The line went dead.
I didn't breathe. I didn't move.
Four years of marriage. Four years of believing I was loved by the only man who had ever made me feel safe.
I had left the Army Medical Corps for him. Walked away from a trauma surgery fellowship at Walter Reed — the most competitive program in military medicine — because he said he wanted a life together. A home. A family.
"I've seen enough war, Nora," he'd whispered on our wedding night. "I just want you. That's the only mission that matters."
And I had believed him, because he had saved my life in Kandahar. Because when the mortar hit and the field hospital collapsed, he was the one who dug me out of the rubble with his bare hands, bleeding, screaming my name.
How do you not love a man who bled for you?
How do you ever suspect that the bleeding was part of the job?
My throat closed, but I didn't cry.
I had survived a building falling on me. I would survive this.
I stepped back silently, returned to the bedroom, and closed the door without a sound.
I pulled out my phone and opened a contact I hadn't used in four years.
Colonel Grace Nakamura. My former commanding officer at Walter Reed.
"Colonel, it's Nora. I need to come home."
The reply came in ninety seconds.
"Nora Sinclair. I've been waiting for this call for four years. How fast can you move?"
"Forty-eight hours."
"I'll have credentials and housing ready. Welcome back, Captain."
I deleted the message thread, slipped the pregnancy test back into my robe, and placed my hand flat against my stomach.
This baby was mine. Mine alone.
I heard Ryan's footsteps in the hall. I smoothed my face into the soft, trusting expression he was used to — the one he'd probably been trained to cultivate in me.
The door opened. He leaned against the frame, arms crossed, that devastating half-smile.
"Hey, beautiful. You're still up?"
"Couldn't sleep. Wanted to see you."
He crossed the room and kissed my forehead. "Missed you today."
The same mouth that had just called me an "asset."
"I missed you too," I said.
He pulled me against his chest, and I let him, because I needed forty-eight more hours of his ignorance.
But as he held me, my eyes were open, dry, and already calculating my extraction.
Chapter 2
The next morning, I made Ryan his usual breakfast — black coffee, scrambled eggs, hot sauce on the side.
He sat at the table in his fatigues, scrolling his phone, not looking up.
"I've got a training rotation this week. Might be gone a few days."
"Okay. Be safe."
"Always."
He'd used the word "training" eleven times in the past month. I used to believe every one.
Now I wondered how many of those nights were spent at Coronado, filing reports about his compliant, controllable wife.
As he stood to leave, his phone buzzed on the counter. He'd left it face-up.
A message from a contact labeled "CENTCOM — OPS":
"Sinclair file updated. Separation paperwork drafted. Awaiting your green light."
Sinclair. My maiden name. In a military operations thread.
Ryan grabbed the phone before I could blink.
"Work stuff," he said easily.
"Of course." I smiled.
The second his truck pulled out of the driveway, I moved.
Forty-eight hours. I had forty-eight hours.
First, I went to his home office. The desk drawer had a combination lock — but I'd watched him open it a hundred times. He'd never bothered to shield the code because he never imagined his trusting wife would dare look.
Inside, I found it within minutes.
A classified folder stamped "OPERATION HEARTHSTONE."
My photo was clipped to the first page.
Subject: Captain Nora Sinclair, AMEDD. Status: Married (cover). Objective: Long-term domestic integration for asset monitoring and behavioral study.
I was a case study.
Our entire marriage — the proposal, the home, the Sunday morning pancakes, the whispered I-love-you's in the dark — was a psychological operation.
I flipped the page. There were quarterly assessments. Written by Ryan.
"Q3: Subject remains emotionally dependent. No signs of suspicion. Recommend continued integration."
"Q7: Subject expressed desire to return to medicine. Redirected successfully. Advised subject that domestic stability was priority. Subject complied."
Subject complied.
Every time I'd mentioned missing surgery, missing the operating room, missing the rush of saving lives — and he'd pulled me close and said "You save me every day, that's enough" — it was a documented redirection technique.
My hands shook so hard the papers rattled.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to drive to Coronado and burn his career to the ground.
But I didn't.
Instead, I photographed every page — the operation file, the quarterly assessments, the separation paperwork, the chain of command — and uploaded them to an encrypted drive.
Then I put everything back exactly as I found it.
That evening, Ryan came home early, smelling of salt air and gunpowder.
"You look tense," he said, studying me. Reading me. Like he'd been trained to.
"Just a headache. I think I'll visit my friend Dana in Portland this weekend. Girls' trip."
Something flickered behind his eyes — relief, maybe. Or operational satisfaction that I was removing myself from the house during a useful window.
"That sounds great. You deserve it."
Deserve it. Like a reward for good behavior.
"Ryan?"
"Yeah?"
"Have you ever thought about what you'd do if something happened to me? If I just... disappeared?"
He looked at me, and for half a second, something real crossed his face. Something that looked almost like fear.
Then it was gone.
"Nothing's going to happen to you, Nora. I'd never let it."
He kissed my temple.
That night, I lay beside him in the dark, listening to his breathing slow into sleep.
The man next to me was a stranger. He had always been a stranger.
I had just been too in love to notice.
Thirty-six hours.
Chapter 3
My last morning in that house began like every other.
I woke at 0600, made breakfast, kissed Ryan goodbye at the door.
"Back Thursday," he said. "Training."
"I know. Good luck."
The second his truck disappeared, I began.
I had packed a single duffel the night before, hidden under the guest bed. Inside: my passport, my military credentials, the encrypted USB drive, one change of clothes, and the only photo of my mother I couldn't leave behind.
Everything else — the furniture he'd chosen, the life he'd designed, the rings — I left untouched.
I wanted him to know I hadn't taken a single thing that belonged to his operation.
Because none of it had ever been real.
At 0900, I made one final stop: his office.
I placed a single envelope on his desk, centered, impossible to miss.
Inside was a handwritten letter and one item.
"Ryan,
I found Operation Hearthstone. I've read every quarterly assessment you filed about me. I know what I was to you — a subject, an asset, a case study in compliance.
I know everything.
By the time you read this, Captain Nora Sinclair will no longer exist. Don't look for me. You were trained to find people. I was trained to survive. Let's see which training holds.
I'm returning your ring. I have no use for props from a performance.
— Nora"
Beneath the letter, I placed my wedding band.
I stared at it — the simple gold ring he'd slid onto my finger in a chapel in Monterey, the Pacific crashing behind us, my heart so full I thought it would burst.
Now it was just metal. Part of a costume.
I closed the office door and walked to the front entrance.
A black SUV was waiting at the corner — arranged by Colonel Nakamura, who had activated a military medical transfer so clean it would leave no civilian trace.
As I slid into the back seat, my phone buzzed.
Ryan's mother, Diane.
I stared at the screen. Diane had always been kind to me — Sunday dinners, birthday cards, stories about Ryan as a little boy.
Did she know? Had she always known her son's marriage was a government contract?
I declined the call.
She would find out soon enough.
The SUV pulled away, and I watched the little house with the blue shutters — the house I had planted a garden in front of, the house where I had imagined raising children — shrink in the mirror.
Four years of my life in that beautiful lie.
I turned forward and didn't look back.
At the airport, as I waited for my military transport connection, my phone buzzed one last time.
A text from an unknown number:
"Hey Nora! It's Lieutenant Keyes 😊 Ryan gave me your number — he said you might want to grab coffee before the unit dinner next month? I just transferred to his team and he's been SO welcoming. He talks about you constantly. You're such a lucky wife! 💕"
I read it twice.
So there was a new woman in his orbit. Another "subject," perhaps. Or just a young officer who didn't know what she was walking into.
I typed back a single line:
"Ask Ryan what Operation Hearthstone is."
Then I blocked the number, powered off the phone, and boarded the transport.
Somewhere over the Rockies, I pressed my hand to my stomach and whispered to the tiny heartbeat inside me.
"It's just you and me now. And I promise you — that's more than enough."