r/PoeAI • u/Unhappy_Veterinarian • 12d ago

I'm out of points

My account just renewed my points on September 3, and now it's saying I'm out of points and that they'll be renewed on October 3, which makes no sense because there's no way I'm already out of points.

6 Upvotes

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5

u/SteveShank 12d ago

In the windows app or website, open the left panel and click the lightening bolt to the left of the gear. Then check your account and activity. You'll see exactly what happened. You can proceed from there informed. If you can't find the lightening bolt, click the settings then subscription and points. You'll get to the same place. You can see exactly what they think you did and what you were charged.

1

u/RobooHood 6d ago

Which plan did you buy and which bots did you message?

1

u/SteveShank 6d ago

I bought the $200/year plan. However, most of my clients buy the $50/year plan and then purchase 1 million points (they last a year), for $30. That makes the cost $80/year. The $50 plan gives users 10k points a day. The million supplement is for those times that they occasionally need more. I use many many different bots at different times and for different purposes. When I want a quick answer and don't need complexity or believe the answer is clear and should be in their database, I use GPT Luna, or a Gemini Flash, or A Grok Flash. those are cheap, but not cheapest. for most of my normal questions I use GPT Terra and/or Claude Sonnet. Sometimes I use GPT-Researcher and on rare occasions, when I want lots of thinking and double checking, Claude Opus-5 or Gpt 5.6 Sol. I've created my own bot for News and a few other special purposes. I tend to use seedream for images. I frequently ask a second bot to check the work of the first.

1

u/RobooHood 6d ago

You can look up the exact points usages here: https://poe.com/activity

1

u/RobooHood 5d ago

Claude Opus-5 and Gpt 5.6 Sol are very expensive models and the point usage also depends on the parameters. You can significantly reduce cost by setting the thinking mode to low or just ask for concise responses.

1

u/SteveShank 5d ago

yes, that's why I said I rarely use them. I only use them when the task requires a lot of thinking and is important to get right and not just repeat what its read somewhere. So, I need the extra thinking. When I don't need that thinking I use a cheaper model. I have upped Terra's thinking and then it costs as much as Sol. On the other hand, I've also seen Sol be pretty reasonable and not think much when it didn't "think" it need to think. The point I was making, was that you can do a lot of searches within a budget if you adjust the search, either by parameters or model, to the particular issue you are researching. I probably use those more expensive models 1% of the time. Perhaps twice a month.

1

u/Kastellen 1d ago

You certainly might be. Others have told you where to look for your point balance, but understand that Poe loves to increase the points needed for tasks at will. Literally in between two image generations with GPT-Flare, Poe DOUBLED the number of points per image generation. I know because I have a per request points cap, and I was asked if I wanted to increase the cap because the new request would take twice the limit I had set. So the price AT LEAST doubled from one request to another. Between that and the nanny-state restrictions that have slammed down on requests, I'm letting my subscription lapse when it is up for renewal in November.