r/ClaudeAI • u/Malnash-4607 • Jul 23 '26
Feedback Warning: claiming the "free $100 Fable 5 credits" silently turns on paid usage billing (Pro plan)
I'm on Claude Pro. On Tuesday was offered $100 in free promotional credits for Fable 5. I claimed them
What isn't made clear anywhere in that flow: claiming those credits automatically enables usage credits on your account with no limit. And once usage credits are on, they don't just apply to Fable 5. They apply to everything you do past your normal plan limits.
So I carried on using Opus 4.8 like I always do. Hit my 5-hour limit. Instead of the usual "you're rate limited, come back later," it just… kept going. Quietly billing me.
NZ$50.15 later, I noticed. My $100 Fable 5 promo credits are still sitting there untouched — the charge was entirely from normal Opus usage that would previously have just been throttled.
To be clear about what I think the actual problem is:
- Claiming a free promo silently flips on a paid billing feature
- There's no clear warning that non-Fable usage above your plan limit will now be charged
- The rate limit stops being a limit and becomes a meter, with no prompt or confirmation
Attempted to refund via the chatbot but got "We've determined that your purchase doesn't meet our refund eligibility criteria due to falling outside of the timeframe for our policy. "
Please check your settings
Update: Looking at screenshots from the offer (from other posts) - yes, this is on me, and I'm lucky it was a low charge amount - what could have been clearer is that the spend is not limited to just the free credit or Fable 5 usage, and without adding a Monthly spend limit, it's unlimited
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u/Plastic-Extension420 Jul 23 '26
You’re right to push back on this one
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u/Weary_Cup_1004 Jul 23 '26
This really landed
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u/Significant-Bee5101 Jul 23 '26
The smoking gun
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u/DeliciousGorilla Jul 23 '26
Searched for 1 pattern, ran 2 shell commands
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u/LEERROOOOYYYYY Jul 23 '26
Found the gotcha
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u/debian3 Jul 23 '26
That comment is load bearing
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u/ExpertProfessional9 Jul 23 '26
And honestly? That’s rare.
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u/apoliticalpundit69 Jul 23 '26
This is the most important thing said in the whole conversation.
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u/you_are_soul Jul 24 '26
You've said something important and I want to give it the attention it deserves.
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u/maninblacktheory Jul 23 '26
Same thing happened to me. I was working with CC pointed at Fable5. Got the email about the $100 usage credit, accepted it, and carried on. I was taking periodic breaks from the dev work throughout the day, so I just assumed my limits were resetting every 5 hours like usual. Hit the hard limit wall late that night, went into my account to turn on the extra usage option, and found that it was already on and had used up the entire $100 credit over the course of the last 18 hours. :-/
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u/dumdodo Jul 23 '26
Note: The settings under Usage are far greater on a PC than a phone (at least on mine). If you can't find the options to reset your Usage on your phone, try a PC. If anyone has found a way to reset these for a phone, please post them.
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u/well_uh_yeah Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
As soon as I claimed it I thought, “but how will it know when to stop?” Went in, saw the option, immediately turned it off. Good thing too because for whatever reason the web interface was also set to fable and I’d have burned through all of it and more asking about rehab options for my mom’s broken hip!
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u/peachybeanpainter Jul 23 '26
Good reminder to always double-check billing settings after accepting promotional credits.
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u/Short-Lengthiness396 Jul 23 '26
you use Fable to ask about rehab options for your mom’s broken hip? well uh yeah
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Jul 23 '26
[deleted]
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u/ImSuperHelpful Jul 23 '26
This was an issue yesterday, I assume they fixed it overnight… what’s weird is that different people were having different amounts set as the limit throughout the day. Mine was set to $2000, people were reporting unlimited a little while before I claimed my credit. And I’ve definitely never enabled usage billing on the account, it’s a $20/month pro plan, usage billing gets you like an hour of work for that (which is also insane)
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u/ToMyOtherFavoriteWW Jul 23 '26
I think it was fixed overnight. When I activated my $100 this morning it auto-set a $40 monthly limit, which I felt was quite reasonable.
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u/ZiKyooc Jul 23 '26
I have changed those settings in the past before disabling and setting the limit to 0 some time ago. It remained at 0 and disabled automatically extending sessions.
Maybe doing that move your settings from "default" to the specific value you set
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u/usefulidiotsavant Jul 23 '26
If you set it to zero, then you won't be able to use the Fable free credits. It also resets every month, so if you set it to $100 and suck all the free credits before that, then from August 1 you will spend ANOTHER $100 from your own money. Quite a dark and confusing pattern they created there.
That being said, the key setting here is "Auto-reload: Off". If you don't have any of your own purchased credits, and you don't enable auto-reload, then it can't charge you any extra on your credit card (if they don't break this too, as they have done in the past).
If you do have purchased credits loaded on the account, then there's no combination of settings that will allow you to isolate that from the free credits, you need to watch the Usage page.
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u/abhiasap Jul 23 '26
I just checked too and mine is also enabled (and it definitely was not before). It probably depends on when you claimed credits.
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u/r0ck0 Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
Looks like mine flipped itself on after accepting the $100 offer about 3 hours ago.
I never had it on before. Have never used API credits at all.
But the modal giving the offer in the first place said that it would do this.
So maybe we're talking about different settings elsewhere?
I'm talking about the toggle to the right-hand-side of:
https://claude.ai/new#settings/usage
Usage credits
Turn on usage credits to keep using Claude if you hit a plan limit. Learn more
...Is that what you're talking about?
I guess that needs to be on to use it at all anyway though?
/u/Malnash-4607 ... are you talking about that switch too?
Or are you talking about?...
https://claude.ai/new#settings/billing
Auto-reload
Automatically buy more usage credits when you’re running low
...mine there has a "Turn on" button to the right-hand-side, so I assume it's off.
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u/Geekfest Jul 23 '26
I did mine yesterday, and fortunately I had the presence of mind to check, and my usage settings were set to unlimited. So I set that sucker to $10.
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u/mfb1274 Jul 23 '26
I’m dealing with this nonsense right now too. We have a team plan and it’s causing havoc. WTF anthropic? Not only predatory but actively puts your customers in a terrible position
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u/null_reference_user Jul 23 '26
Anthropic, you really don't have the PR capital right now to be pulling this sorta shit
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u/Tank-Pilot74 Jul 23 '26
This is exactly what’s blowing my mind… the money that they make off this little cockup is NOTHING to them… what’s the end play here?!?
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u/hurrdurrmeh Jul 23 '26
I think they know they can fuck about because they have the best model. Hopefully soon that will change.
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u/LostCookie78 Jul 23 '26
Claude is so bad at enabling usage in a clear and good way.
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u/hurrdurrmeh Jul 23 '26
Almost like it is on purpose.
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u/T-Dot1992 Jul 23 '26
Either they are vibecoding real hard, making stupid mistakes in their dogshit codebase. Or doing it on purpose. Or the former at first, then it became the latter.
They both are dogshit companies, that are way overvalued, and frankly suck ass at what they do. I hope the bubble pops soon.
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u/Ok-Pin-4379 Jul 23 '26
I didn’t know how credits worked, so Opus used some to finish a task while I wasn’t paying attention.
I can’t believe how lucky I got.
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u/profscumbag Jul 23 '26
it looks to me like you used 13 cents of your $100 credit
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u/BP041 Jul 23 '26
That's a nasty trap. Head to Account > Billing > Usage Credits and make sure it's set to zero or disabled — the toggle's easy to miss. I run 18 daily cron jobs and this is exactly the kind of silent overrun that'd eat a budget. Claude being way too polite when you'd rather it just said no.
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u/jsoccerboy Jul 23 '26
May I ask what you use the cron jobs for? Trying to find cool ways to use Claude
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u/BP041 Jul 23 '26
Yeah, I use cron jobs to auto-summarize my daily notes and check for action items. Saves me from manually scanning everything.
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u/binary Jul 23 '26
I don't understand, when I look at Settings > Usage I see the $100 in Usage credits I claimed with no language indicating it can only be used for Fable. Where is it stated that those credits are bucketed for a particular model?
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u/abhiasap Jul 23 '26
I knew there was a point to doom scrolling reddit. This post just saved me money.
I just checked and the same thing happened to me. My monthly spend limit was also set to unlimited and usage credits turned on. I definitely did not expect that.
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u/distante Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 25 '26
You can setup your monthly spend limit to 0
Edit: this prevents claude to use the credits, BUT if you keep auto-reload off it is safe to set it to the same value of the promotional balance.
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u/enriqxxx Jul 23 '26
It's a huge scam—watch out for this. Don't leave the auto-pay feature on; that $100 disappears in less than an hour of use, and then it keeps draining money from your cards.
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u/hclpfan Jul 23 '26
This has been posted about before. It does not change the value you have set it to - but if you never had credits and therefor never have a value it defaults to unlimited.
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u/Impossible-Magician Jul 23 '26
NZ likely has stronger consumer protection laws. Lodge a complaint with them if they don’t refund you.
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u/suersmild Jul 23 '26
API is the same. I ran a test, I set a limit and it went beyond it by 8c. Now I think it's expected i pay that amount and the lowest deposit amount is $5. What's that all about?
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u/uzicoin Jul 23 '26
same here i also got robbed $100 in additional use with no warning , just found the setting and switched it off --___--
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u/KernelTaint Jul 23 '26
How?
I claimed the $100 free credit.
My spend limited.was set at $15 which I'd previously set.
My auto reload was turned off.
So I used the up tye allowed $15 (via opus not fable), then I wanted to continue so I bumped my monthly to 100$, kept auto reload off obviously.
No problem.
I don't understand what the fuss is going on in this thread.
It's not limited to fable only. It won't bill your card unless you let it by having auto reload on.
It didn't change my spend cap.
I claimed and used it a few days ago.. no problems.
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u/Expensive-Field4741 Jul 23 '26
From what I've gathered so far, if you never turned credits on it'll toggle them on and leave it on the default settings: unlimited and autobuy. It happened to me when I claimed my credits. (I was already wary of my settings changed since I do NOT want to EVER use credits. So I caught it immediately. Still.)
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u/IntheInBetween_ Jul 23 '26
Same thing happened to me. This feels...illegal. If not illegal, absolutely SHADY.
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u/Bandit954 Jul 24 '26
Let me know if I can buy you a coffee, caught that seconds after accepting the $100 thanks to you.
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u/Malnash-4607 Jul 25 '26
Thanks for the offer but all good :) if you have a min and would like to give feedback on my new SaaS that I was working on when it eat my cash that would be super helpful (link in bio - don’t want to get band for spam)
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u/PinkySwearNotABot Jul 23 '26
they took a page out of Google Enterprise Platform, when they were giving out those $300 AI credits. First, you had to enable billing and then work through a convoluted web of contradictory and ambiguous instructions and then BAM. you got a bill, even though you still have $280 in credits left.
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u/ValerianCandy Jul 23 '26
but isn't that immediately followed by the same amount but minus.
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u/dumdodo Jul 23 '26
When I go to usage now, it only tells me the amount of daily usage, and the time it resets, and the amount of weekly usage.
If I go to billing, all it shows me is that I have a pro plan, and then there is to an option to manage on Claude.ai, and if I click on that I get logged out.
Yesterday, I opted in on the $100 Fable free credits, and clicked on an option that seems to be no longer visible anywhere to turn off the usage for the $100 credits or any additional charges beyond pro. I can't describe it any better than that, because it seems to be gone. His anthropic messing with the interface as we speak, or am I looking in the wrong place?
As a side note, Claude seems to be having a nervous breakdown in the past few days, and I'm thinking of dumping it anyway. Is anyone else experiencing that?
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u/Greedy-Citron-7802 Jul 24 '26
Im so glad Ive just found this post by accident before I would have racked up a fortune. I checked my settings and the usage limit was set to 2k!! Ive now set it to zero, I think ive only accrued £10 debt, I hope anyway as its a little confusing!
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u/Unconformeds Aug 01 '26
Fingers crossed, the charge I was given was around $150. I don't see it in billing, and I don't see it in useage anymore. Finn the AI Agent thinks it may have been reversed. Has anyone actually been charged?
I hope they fixed this, it would have restored a lot of faith as I was 1000% leaving.
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u/untss Jul 23 '26
It isn't silent, there's a notification and it's very obvious why they'd offer you a usage credit in the first place. This is user error. Put a spending limit on the account until the credit is used up.
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u/mfb1274 Jul 23 '26
Nah something changed. We had a teams plan with zero issues for months. Accepted the credits and the ENTIRE team is complaining. No bueno when the company itself offers something that actively causes disruption
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u/Judonoob Jul 23 '26
In the US it was pretty clear (IMO) that the $100 was specifically for Fable usage.
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u/trinde Jul 23 '26
There is literally nothing under the Usage Credits section in the UI (on claude.ai at least) that indicates that those usage credits can only be used for Fable.
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u/myimpendinganeurysm Jul 23 '26
They may have given them to use with Fable, but they explicitly say they're normal usage credits that can and will be used for whatever model.
They also don't "silently" turn on usage credits; they tell you.
Turning on usage credits (even with no limit) does not turn on auto top up, so it's not spending money unless you tell it to.
I don't understand people like the OP. Are they illiterate or something?
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u/ClaudeOfficial Anthropic Jul 23 '26
Hey u/Malnash-4607 , we'd love to look into this for you. Saw your DMs are turned off -- could you shoot us a message? Also reached out via the social links in your profile.
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u/profscumbag Jul 23 '26
Looking at the settings -> usage, I don't see a separate balance for Fable. There's one credit balance with an auto-reload option. If I turn on the limit, it applied to the credit usage as well (i.e. I will limit myself from spending the promotional credits).
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u/ChaseballBat Jul 23 '26
Yea I'm not using this shit lol. I used a regular model and even with usage limits turned on they went over by nearly 15%. I'm not sure if I'm going to be charged that amount seeing as I don't have any more funds to pull from within Claude.
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u/Best_Explanation917 Jul 23 '26
I am not able use fable as it always puts me on guardrails and downgrade to opus 4.8. so this is anyways not a problem for me when fable is unusable for me, better to use credit and get over it.
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u/XBLAH_ Jul 23 '26
Yeah, reading this, I noticed Claude sneakily turned on "Turn on usage credits to keep using Claude if you hit a limit." when I just accepted the credits for Fable.
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u/Quind1 Jul 23 '26
This happened to me with Replit also. Lesson learned there was to always set a usage cap for any API I'm connecting to, before I start using it.
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u/TallyMay Jul 23 '26
How does credit claim work exactly? I've cancelled couple of weeks ago. Do you need to receive a promotion in email or would subscribing right now would load it in?
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u/DaemonStrikeEXE Jul 23 '26
This happened when I got free 20$ during a previous promotion, thankfully I caught it early
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u/SubstantialGas5225 Jul 23 '26
I had the credit offer pop up today seen it everyday but today when i clicked it. I didnt get sent to the screen to enter payment info it just gave me credits. Glad i saw this post sure enough it turned them on. Maybe i mossed it saying it would activate usage credits... but idk why i didnt see it this tike but did every ither time when i would click no when it said it would activate them. Either way saved me from accidental charges.
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u/Legitimate-Pumpkin Jul 23 '26
That’s the exact reason I’m considering moving to openai. I like Claude a lot and until lately I thought their weird limit system made sense but since a few months they’ve been using different tricks to push users into activating the API (which defaults no limit). The kind of practice I mostly call theft that is nowadays sadly very common. “Here is your “gift””. Hate it…
Very disappointed at anthropic, to be honest
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u/just-fran Jul 23 '26
It seems to work as prepaid credit. Once you hit 0$ you shouldnt be able to spend more than the monthly limit unless there is automatic recharge
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u/Fit_Low592 Jul 23 '26
I was offered this too, and jumped in but couldn’t figure out how to make Claude go past my $20/mo limit and use the promotional credits.
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u/Tank-Pilot74 Jul 23 '26
I’m NEVER one to defend corporations and their shitty practices, but it makes no sense for them to do this with malicious intent? “We’re already on shakeup ground, let’s piss our customers off even more!” probably isn’t their M.O here..?
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u/recK7 Jul 23 '26
I can confirm that the credits can be used not only with Fable, I’ve used some of mine with Opus and Sonnet.
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u/RogBoArt Jul 23 '26
I had usage enabled with a $20 monthly spend limit and the limit is still present after accepting the credits on a pro account.
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u/goldman_emma Jul 23 '26
The architecture diagram was high altitude: 'Here's $100 of free Fable credits.' The billing implementation was sea level: 'By the way, we enabled unlimited paid usage.'
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u/Cold_Ocelot_7163 Jul 23 '26
Just checked and mine was enabled after claiming the $100 thanks for the heads up
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u/AppealSame4367 Jul 23 '26
They are scammers. But some poeple still defend this. It's forbidden in many countries to mislead customers like this. I hope that open weight models will win.
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u/a_reddit_right_hand Jul 23 '26
Just checked my account and found that usage credits were NOT automatically enabled.
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u/Veloxy Jul 23 '26
It left my settings as they were, maybe because I've turned it off previously as I tend to make sure these types of surprises do not happen. (Learned the hard way, had a AWS lambda function looping on me many years ago which caused a high bill, they waived the bill though after my blog post about it went viral)
Always check and validate pay per use settings, for anything. Set limits and alerts, stay away from platforms that do not have configurable hard limits.
It's concerning though, that there isn't a clear warning (if true) that it would enable paid usage billing. That's definitely a dark pattern that should raise alarm bells, especially for something that can ramp up a bill to many thousands in a short time.
I'd love to see some actual proof to know if it's truly a dark pattern or just carelessness from the user side.
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u/Legitimate-Egg1873 Jul 23 '26
It’s like Anthropic wants me to switch to OpenAI or local open models. (Which I am)
I am done with the short 4 hour session windows limitations, every week changing billing, then you can have access to fable, then you can’t.
Sorry for the rant;
5.6 sol is for me good enough for my use cases. It has weekly limits, it just works.
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u/Devender_Garg Jul 23 '26
It was even worse for me. I woke up to this current session, and Fable incurred a $50 Excess usage bill while I didn't do any of these, and my auto-pay was also off.
My account was not hacked. None of my own systems used it, so it is a pure glitch. I do not know how to contact a real human at Antropic. Their official AI chatbot is just summarizing my problem, with no solution at all.
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u/lennarn Jul 23 '26
Thanks for the heads up! This is the kind of sneaky shitty behavior that is really turning me off anthropic and seriously consider cancelling my membership for good.
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u/ElementOfExpectation Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
Also, set limits at least 2 dollars under what you have (e.g. 98 if you have 100 to use) because claude actually goes over the limit you set by some amount. Terrible, abusive UX.
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u/Salt-Independent-427 Jul 23 '26
I just unlinked it from my PayPal, they are going to rob people of a fortune. And they just got sued for overbilling millions to corporations. They are criminals. Through and through.
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u/BlueProcess Jul 23 '26
Yup. That's why I cancelled my subscription. I'm not interested in doing business with a company that has set itself up to arbitrarily bill me any amount it claims I used with no advanced estimate or disclosure of cost, no way to audit it's claims of usage, no recourse for inefficient usage, and no recourse for ineffective usage.
Until Anthropic starts dealing with its customers in a transparent, predictable, and forthright manner I do not intend to be one of their customers.
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u/TheLordPapaya Jul 23 '26
I don’t know about you but when I claimed it it actually told me that usage credits were turned on, so I went to the settings immediately to turn it back off
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u/GuacamoleAnamoly Jul 23 '26
Thanks for the post. I was unaware of this and i claimed it yesterday and it was indeed enabled. Sneaky mfers
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u/SameExplanation652 Jul 23 '26
oh my god says i owe $18 now, wtaf claude?? im cancelling it now this is crap
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u/technotim44 Jul 23 '26
Anthropic is the worst company, I am over them after this launch of fable 5, taking it away and false advertising so many times that it was "going out of the plan" then staying. Their coding was so bad on the apps I made it was terrible. Chatgpt has outperformed Claude with codex by far so I've switched to it. Anthropic seems to me to be a group of privileged San Francisco people who believe they can charge for crap just because they think they are great.
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u/Illustrious_Matter_8 Jul 23 '26
That's a big problem.. though I'm planning to move to open router it's cheaper just pay only for usage, and still use any model I want.
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u/CyberiaCalling Jul 23 '26
Straight up evil behavior by Anthropic. Unprofessional, unacceptable and probably illegal.
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u/sceez Jul 23 '26
Hah I have only used Fable since claiming it and have like $50 left, but huge thank you for the warning.
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u/writesandbikes Jul 23 '26
Thank you for posting this!!! I KNOW we’re supposed to read the fine print but I don’t and I missed this completely and now you have saved my butt. A huge and heartfelt thank you!!!
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u/Civil_Dot_6696 Jul 23 '26
awful claim your $100 1 hour later claim your $85 one hour later claim your $75, then you haven't claimed your free $75 .. Who ever designed this should be fired.
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u/dasko1086 Jul 23 '26
yeah , tick it off and use as you need before they expire, claude is in a spiral with other options being better right now, fable should be regular model available to everyone like opus, just more usage, end of story, Sol 5.6 is annihilating it in engineering based reasoning for me for the past 3 days. as an engineer, the claude team needs to get their shit together to be honest.
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u/zvocs Jul 23 '26
Can i get an explanation for this?
Will i be billed automatically if these free credits run out?
It's wierd not to have fable in my standard plan. I'm somewhat new in this world so I'm not sure what happened here.
What I understood is that Fable is only available via usage credits and that i need to turn on usage credits if i want to use it (otherwise no fable). But what if I run out of them? No automatic billing if auto reload is not turned on?
I don't want to spend more money then i got for free from Anthropic.
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u/Prestigious_Tooth450 Jul 23 '26
Omg thanks!!!! Caught it at 2 dollars but I'm using like crazy I didn't realize the paid usage.
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u/PrincepsMagnus Jul 23 '26
I wouldn’t have known this and didn’t press it out of instinct because I had feeling there was something nefarious happening.
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u/arthurtc2000 Jul 23 '26
It wasn’t silent, it was made very clear to me. Also auto recharge is off. I don’t see how this is shady as it’s made very clear.
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u/WatchPenSpaceGeek Jul 23 '26
If you didn’t turn on auto reload, you’re not getting any surprise bill, and accepting the credits does not flip that switch. I fail to see the problem.
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u/nhouseholder Jul 23 '26
So are the free usage credits only for fable? Or will opus drain them as well?
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u/cirad Jul 23 '26
I have never used credits. so if I go and turn if off, can I still use that $100? I have auto reload off, usage credits off right now
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u/LiebtMuffMunchen Jul 23 '26
Got me as well. $125. GRRRR
No notification. Saw the little circle at the bottom and saw it said $120. Weird.
Then check billing. And find this thread. Billing ok… auto reload is OFF. Must be some credit thing. All ok.
Do some more, then notice it’s 125 spent …
The find the usage tab…which I have never opened before . Under usage credits was on. $2000 monthly spend limit.
Pretty poor. Lucky I found it.
I’d been hitting limits working occasionally over the past few months. Always ground to a halt and waited a few hours. That worked.
Not happy.
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u/OneStopWarCrimeShop Jul 23 '26
I claimed it and I didn't even get any credits, even after it said I would get something like $150AUD
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u/Smart_Technology_208 Jul 23 '26
Yeah claiming the $100 for extra usage enable extra usage, who would have thought???
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u/Interesting-Handle63 Jul 23 '26
ye no shit, u only need 1 brain cell to know that it would turn into a paid usage
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u/kahless2k Jul 23 '26
Well they are giving you the credit as usage credits, so one would expect that to be on and to use usage credits for things your plan doesn't cover, IE fable or when you hit your limits.
How did you expect it to work?
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u/Plane-Vegetable9174 Jul 23 '26
Is there any AI company that actually cares amor people or are they all greedy suckers doing their best to trick people and take their money?
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u/jorgejhms Jul 23 '26
I don't understand the issue. You're using the credits, they charge you apart from those credits?
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u/Ok-Quantity4815 Jul 23 '26
YES! Good warning. As far as I can tell this is only for users who haven’t signed up for or set up their usage credits in the past so it defaults to that.
Everyone should check it though.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Job_538 Jul 23 '26
i just blew $55CAD to make some edits to a 300 line py script and a couple of spreadsheets using fable 5. it was super fast, finished my problem in about 20 minutes, using free credits. but $55 for editing? what a joke! ya ya i know context size blah blah tools blah blah. TL;DR it's very greedy
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u/Telepath23 Jul 23 '26
They’re gonna do whatever they can to make this ‘the big short’ rerun turn a profit
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u/Current-Lime-9637 Jul 23 '26
Happened to me when they offered $20 of free credits like a month or so ago. Luckily I caught it then, so I had already set my credit usage limit. I do not appreciate not informing me when im almost out of my session limit and immediately swapping to credits, tho. Id at least like some kind of warning
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u/andymaclean19 Jul 23 '26
Doesn't it only bill from credit you have on your account and stop when your balance reaches 0?
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u/MutleyCrew7 Jul 23 '26
I only just joined pro and got offered this, is it worth doing or no? I haven’t really started to use Claude yet.
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u/Jasong222 Jul 23 '26
Yes, but if you don't have a payment option plugged in, you won't get charged, it'll give you the warning and cut you off, and only use that credit for fable.
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u/SockPants Jul 23 '26
Does it charge you when you haven't added any credit though? I thought it would just hit the block if you haven't put any credit on first.
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u/thedarklord0100 Jul 23 '26
I checked this as soon as I got the free credits, it isn't enabled by default, atleast in my account. I also checked it 3-4 times again when my normal limit expired, it was off then too.
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u/GwAdAToRr Jul 23 '26
Pareil j'ai été facturé, heureusement que j'étais en fait de tâche , ils m'ont facturé 7€
1
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u/ClaudeAI-mod-bot Wilson, lead ClaudeAI modbot Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
TL;DR of the discussion generated automatically after 160 comments.
Okay, listen up. The consensus in this thread is that OP is right to be pissed.
Claiming the "free" $100 Fable 5 credits has been silently enabling usage-based billing and setting the monthly spend limit to "unlimited" for many Pro users. Instead of hitting your usual rate limit, Claude just keeps working and starts charging your card for all model usage, not just Fable. This has resulted in a bunch of you getting hit with unexpected bills.
While a few users are calling this "user error" and say they saw a notification, the sheer number of people caught by surprise suggests this is a predatory dark pattern. Experiences are mixed, with some reporting their settings weren't changed, which might mean Anthropic has been quietly fixing the flow.
Here's how to protect your wallet: * Go to Account > Billing > Usage Credits. * Turn OFF the toggle for "Turn on usage credits..." * OR, set a "Monthly spend limit" to a low number like $1. (Setting it to $0 might not work or could default to unlimited). * Double-check that "Auto-reload" is OFF. This is your most important safeguard.
Also, for the record: the credits can be used on any model, not just Fable. Check your settings, people.