To be fair, this is prominently displayed in the console, so they aren't trying to hide it. I personally hate the idea of expiring, but as other commenters have mentioned there are pretty good reasons for this (accounting, banking laws, etc).
Tell HN: Anthropic expires paid credits after a year
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Re: Tell HN: Anthropic expires paid credits after a year
#62Accounting rules: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakage_(accounting)
Re: Tell HN: Anthropic expires paid credits after a year
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Correct, then you effectively become a holder of someone else’s money, which creates all kinds of legal trouble (you need to put that money into a separate, third party’s account that shields it from bankruptcy etc). What they could do is automatically refund the credits to the original account as soon as they expire, but that would mean it’s not the deposit but every API request that would be counted as revenue, whi…
Refunding could violate money laundering laws in some countries, and they're in a lot of countries.
Maybe if they had access to an AI they could have figured out which countries customers could be refunded
Re: Tell HN: Anthropic expires paid credits after a year
#64Accounting rules. If the credits last indefinitely, any unused credits cannot be counted as revenue. Ran into this at my last company when we signed a big contract and gave them hundreds of thousands of dollars in non-expiring credits. Our accountant went nuts when we told him.
I don't really get this logic. Why don't they count it as revenue the moment the credits are issued?
Or is this more just a "this is a convenient free win as a consequence of how we decide to manage our books."
Re: Tell HN: Anthropic expires paid credits after a year
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about Starbucks top up card or Apple iTunes Credit? How would those work?
unlike Anthropic, iTunes and Starbucks are profitable. suppose iTunes gets $1 from every $5 spent there. if Apple sold a $50 gift card, it can pocket $10 and not worry about it. Anthropic, OTOH, sells their API at loss , so unused credits mean losses that await to be materialized. it is unprofitable for them to let you keep the compute bucks forever.
> Anthropic, OTOH, sells their API at loss,
Sources? It is widely believed that their fixed-price plans lose money, but last I heard API (price per token) had positive margins?
Re: Tell HN: Anthropic expires paid credits after a year
#66This doesn’t sound legal in California at least. I know gift certificates are not allowed to expire in California and I would hazard a guess that prepaid credits probably wouldn’t be allowed to expire either.
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Re: Tell HN: Anthropic expires paid credits after a year
#67Accounting rules. If the credits last indefinitely, any unused credits cannot be counted as revenue. Ran into this at my last company when we signed a big contract and gave them hundreds of thousands of dollars in non-expiring credits. Our accountant went nuts when we told him.
I'm not sure if this is legal in California. There's a law here specifically to prevent gift cards from expiring automatically.
Re: Tell HN: Anthropic expires paid credits after a year
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even though they do make it clear, one should still have an issue with providers doing it. The reason is that various providers like Uber, Lyft, Namecheap, and some cloud vendors, etc. do not do it at all. As such it is a fairly unethical practice.
> Even though they do make it clear > As such, it is theft, plain and simple What?
These aren't contradictory. If I say I'm going to steal your phone and then I do, notifying you beforehand doesn't absolve me of criminal liability. One could argue that it's a contractual arrangement, but there's a well established doctrine of unconscionability in contract law. It's especially applicable when contracts are unilateral rather than being negotiated between peers.
Re: Tell HN: Anthropic expires paid credits after a year
#69Accounting rules. If the credits last indefinitely, any unused credits cannot be counted as revenue. Ran into this at my last company when we signed a big contract and gave them hundreds of thousands of dollars in non-expiring credits. Our accountant went nuts when we told him.
Not accounting rules. Shady accounting. Sell someone credits that expire or not expire.. if you sell someone something that expires you can get some free money.
Re: Tell HN: Anthropic expires paid credits after a year
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it feels like a weak excuse for "fuck the customer" as always. Of course it is just an excuse to "fuck the customer" and grab the money, but it is not something you should question, because in our society you don't question how companies make money. And it doesn't matter if you are the offended part, people will just protect the state of affairs,even at their own expense. Just look how people always find a justific…
Kind of understandable after seeing the reaction, I would guess that the same tricks are expected to be made by middle-man companies. Hate the game not the players, I guess?
You can hate the players for perpetuating the game you hate.