My guess is this is so OpenAI can treat it as annual recurring revenue which helps with their stock valuation. I've seen non-LLM API vendors do this with their credits as well.

> This drives up the "real" price of these purchases because of the time constraint.

I'd say you answered your own question.

> telco's tend to be oligopolies and tend to also do some form of price collusion among themselves, it was generally accepted as "just how things were"

So are LLM companies, at this stage

> Am I missing something?

Not really

> Is this really how things should be?

No, this is how thing are. I'm more than interested in ways to change the status quo, though.

For accounting it's better to give things an expiring date. Perhaps 5 year would have been better than 1 to keep people happy, but I don't know why they decided 1 year (or whatever is the exact number).

Can someone explain why OpenAI credits expire?

Just guessing but probably to bring it up to par with a coin operated car wash to get more monies.

- Insert Duckets [1]

- Start Washing Car

- Insert More Duckets to Rinse Car.

[1] - slang, Items of a lootable nature, usually looted off fools.

That, or they don't want criminals building up a cache of credits from stolen credit cards, stolen accounts and reselling the credits / accounts but I prefer to think it's to be a car wash.

- Skirts credit speculation and arbitrage

- Prevents hoarding

- Allows freedom for sales promotions while controlling service commitments

- Marginally increases revenue per unit of service

- Provides stable pricing in shorter term while accommodating price changes over longer term

- Excites engagement

Because someone at openAI decided it so and the CEO approved it.