[BUG] Promotional Extra Usage credits show remaining balance but system blocks as if /usr/bin/bash — billing enforcement/display parity

Preflight Checklist

• [x] I have searched existing issues and this specific variant hasn't been reported
• [x] This is a single bug report
• [x] I am using the latest version of Claude Code

What's Wrong?

Anthropic issued \$200 in Extra Usage credits as goodwill compensation. After using \$100, the billing page at console.anthropic.com correctly displays \$100 remaining balance. However, the system is prompting to add a payment method and blocking further usage as if the balance is \$0.

The billing display and the API enforcement layer are reading from different sources.

What Should Happen?

If the billing page shows \$100 remaining, the API should allow \$100 of usage. A user should never be blocked while their displayed balance shows funds available — regardless of whether those funds came from a promotional grant or a direct purchase.

Hypothesis

Promotional/goodwill credits and user-purchased credits appear to be tracked in separate internal buckets. The API rate limiter checks the "purchased credits" bucket (empty), while the billing display shows the combined balance including promotional credits (\$100 remaining). The enforcement layer is blind to the promo bucket.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Receive promotional Extra Usage credits from Anthropic (e.g. goodwill compensation)
2. Use approximately 50% of the credit
3. Observe billing page: balance shows remaining funds
4. Attempt to continue usage: system prompts to add payment method / blocks requests
5. No usage is possible despite displayed balance showing available credit

Impact

\$100 of valid Anthropic-issued credits are completely inaccessible. The user is forced to add a payment method or stop working despite having funds in their account. This is a direct financial impact on top of the original issue that prompted the compensation.

Environment

• Platform: Windows 11 Pro x64
• Claude Code: v2.1.98
• Plan: Max (\$200/month)
• Credit type: Promotional/goodwill Extra Usage credits issued by Anthropic

Related Issues

• #19673 — "Hit limit while usage still at X% remaining" (oncall, 99 comments) — same enforcement/display parity root cause, different trigger
• #32544 — Extra Usage charged despite available capacity
• #38335 — Max plan limits exhausted abnormally fast (482 comments)

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Max plan subscriber, \$200/month. The \$200 in credits was compensation for prior platform instability. Having that compensation also be inaccessible due to a billing bug is an exceptionally poor experience.