Tell HN: OpenAI’s billing features and customer support are barely functional

Thought I’d give a small warning to people thinking of paying for ChatGPT Plus. You’re forced to use an intercom chat widget to open up customer support tickets, but the response times are abysmal. Currently I have this[1] issue, where an account doesn’t get upgraded after going through the payment flow. It’s been over a week with no reply. I paid money for a service that I’m not receiving. When/if they do respond, I have no idea if they’ll reimburse the days I paid for nothing, who knows, there’s no comms about it on their page. Note that it’s a known problem, given they have a dedicated page for it on their help docs, and there’s a massive thread[2] about it on their forums. Their refund policy[3] goes through the same chat flow, so one could end up paying for two months before they’re finally issued a refund. I know they’re scaling up, but I’m shocked at how bad this is, especially given they’re using stripe for payments. Normally, even when in a move-fast type environment, billing logic/flow is one thing you have to get right before shipping a product to prod. They’re breaking all sorts of consumer rights (especially here in Australia where they are strong). Between broken billing and their recent IAM issues, right now I’d jump at a competitor that can deliver these. 1. https://help.openai.com/en/articles/7232905-why-is-my-plus-subscription-not-appearing 2. https://community.openai.com/t/paid-for-chatgpt-plus-but-still-getting-free-version/129073/1 3. https://help.openai.com/en/articles/7232895-how-do-i-request-a-refund
Story Published at: May 20, 2023 at 09:26AM