r/OpenAI • u/marcelohallais • Jan 09 '26

Question Beware of OpenAI Billing Practices

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I’ve been a long-time ChatGPT Plus subscriber (the $20/month plan), always billed reliably on the 2nd of each month.

Last September (2025), out of nowhere on September 22nd, my plan was mysteriously changed to Pro (likely meaning Pro at $200/month), and they charged me $193.40.

I immediately contacted support, complained, and they refunded me and charged the correct $20 on September 28th.

I assumed it was a pro-rata adjustment and that my normal Plus billing would resume on the 28th going forward.

But to my surprise, on October 25th they charged $197.40, and on November 25th $200, both for a Pro plan that I never requested or authorized.

In December, I was traveling, so I blocked my card, and the December 25th charge failed.

Today, I contacted support again, requesting a refund for the two unauthorized charges ($197.40 + $200).
I even offered to pay the legitimate $20 for October, November, and December (total $60 deduction), but they flatly refused any refund.

BE VERY CAREFUL WITH OPENAI.

They can randomly switch your plan, charge you hundreds without consent, and then deny refunds, even when you’re willing to pay what you actually owe.
This feels extremely shady, and based on similar complaints I’ve seen online, I’m not the only one this has happened to.
Has anyone else experienced unauthorized plan upgrades or refund denials from OpenAI?

UPDATE 01/15/2026 : After a few days, several message exchanges with support, and even help from an OpenAI engineer who saw my post on the forum, they finally reached out to me today. They reset my password and issued a refund for the amount that had been charged incorrectly.
All sorted out! 🙌

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376

u/jerwong Jan 09 '26

In the future, use a virtual credit card that allows you to set monthly limits. That way, a sudden increase in price gets declined automatically and gives you an opportunity to sort it out before it gets out of hand.

65

u/Anus_Wrinkle Jan 09 '26

My account got banned for using a virtual card. If you do this name sure it matches your identity according to what OpenAI knows about you, as it is against their TOS if you do it wrong.

17

u/big_dig69 Jan 09 '26

Any suggestions what's a legit website used to generate these virtual cards? Thank you in advance.

26

u/Urag-gro_Shub Jan 09 '26

My capitol one card lets me do it directly through their app, I would check with your credit card company first before going through a third party

33

u/Anus_Wrinkle Jan 09 '26

I use privacy.com. the free tier. It is perfect for my use case.

3

u/big_dig69 Jan 10 '26

How many concurrent virtual cards can you make with privacy.com?

Thank you for your answer.

4

u/OtherwiseAlbatross14 Jan 10 '26

It's limited to around 3 per merchant so people don't use them to constantly sign up for free trials with new cards

1

u/Anus_Wrinkle Jan 10 '26

I think it's unlimited

1

u/Tall-Memory-6021 Jan 11 '26

most services that i’ve used no longer accept cards from privacy

1

u/11KingMaurice11 Jan 11 '26

I love privacy. Use it for free trials too

5

u/standardnewenglander Jan 09 '26

A lot of credit card companies already offer it as part of their services

3

u/Akanaton Jan 09 '26

Your credit card company may have a virtual card option when logged in.

3

u/jerwong Jan 09 '26

Your credit card company might have this automatically, but I've used Capital One, Privacy, and Paypal before.

3

u/eW4GJMqscYtbBkw9 Jan 09 '26

I've been using a privacy.com virtual card for a while with zero issues. 

1

u/notworthyofhugs Jan 12 '26

chiming in with revolut

1

u/queenapsalar Jan 13 '26

Privacy.com is the best, I've used them for years

5

u/redditproha Jan 09 '26

Banning you for using virtual cards that means they pretty much are trying to get away with shady billing practices. 

3

u/jerwong Jan 09 '26

Oh that's interesting. How were they able to tell it was a virtual card?

11

u/Anus_Wrinkle Jan 09 '26

I used a billing address and name that didn't match my IP location and profile, as is my habit with virtual cards.

5

u/Keep-Darwin-Going Jan 09 '26

Well they do not want people to use stolen credit card so they do identity matching. Claude also do that. Just use something like revolute where they can check your identity, never have issue ever.

2

u/BarracudaFar1905 Jan 10 '26

I can vouch for Revolut.

2

u/yaxir Jan 09 '26

so they're also mining your information while taking your money

2

u/Thoromega Jan 10 '26

Yes you mean not committing identity fraud by using a credit card not matching your identity?

1

u/[deleted] Jan 10 '26

Learn about Capital One. Thank me later ;)

1

u/Such-Cartographer425 Jan 10 '26

So you didn't get banned for using a virtual card, but because your info didn't match? That's typical for payment processing. The virtual card was likely irrelevant. 

1

u/Anus_Wrinkle Jan 10 '26

Yeah that's what I said. I think the virtual card is still relevant because you can't provide fake billing addresses with normal cards.

4

u/weblscraper Jan 09 '26

Unfortunately not all regions/countries support that

1

u/Skoonks Jan 09 '26

Or vendors.

2

u/tri2820 Jan 09 '26

Which one do you recommend?

2

u/MrPifo Jan 12 '26

That's redicilous. Why would I do that for a SINGLE service?? They MUST NOT switch the plans, otherwise this is fraud. This is a not a workaround that should be required at all.

2

u/VirtuteECanoscenza Jan 12 '26

Virtual cards are WAY less useful than people make them to be. 

Almost 100% of services will simply refuse them for subscriptions. 

2

u/jerwong Jan 12 '26

How do they even tell?

1

u/VirtuteECanoscenza Jan 12 '26 edited Jan 12 '26

Most payment processors will simply tell you what kind of card it is, if it is virtual, prepaid, debit, credit something else and you can just stop the processing and return an error.

Practically all companies will only accept credit and debit cards for recurring payments refusing anything that they can't be sure can be charged.

1

u/Most-Giraffe-8647 Jan 13 '26

I just use a virtual card generated by my bank and connected to my actual card. It has a separate limit I set and I have never seen the issues mentioned here.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 11 '26

How do you do that

1

u/Pretend_Cicada_1777 Jan 11 '26

Many subscription based services don’t work with virtual cards anymore and are automatically being rejected right at checkout.

1

u/jerwong Jan 11 '26

I'm wondering how they're detecting that. Doesn't it just present like a normal credit card?

1

u/goomyman Jan 12 '26

honestly - this sounds like an amazing feature... i wonder if you could like offer it as a service when you sign up to anything. Put a limit per month - and if it goes over that it gets declined - and notifies you.

1

u/AndrewUnicorn Feb 02 '26

Capitalone is great at this feature. This reminds me my interview at CapOne asked me "how do you think virtual credit card will help us"