[ChatGPT Desktop Referral] Five invited users completed Desktop usage, but all invitations remain pending and no referral reward was received Summary

What version of the Codex App are you using (From “About Codex” dialog)?

26.814.41407

What subscription do you have?

ChatGPT Plus

What platform is your computer?

Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.19045.0 x64

What issue are you seeing?

I am experiencing an issue with the ChatGPT Desktop / Codex referral program.

I invited five friends through the "Invite friends" referral feature available in my ChatGPT account.

All five invitations are successfully listed in the invitation tracking page, but every invitation continues to show the status Pending.

The invited users have already:

• accepted/received the invitation;
• signed in to the ChatGPT Desktop application using the invited accounts;
• used the ChatGPT Desktop application and also opened Codex and sent at least one Codex prompt/task.

However, none of the five invitations has changed from Pending to a completed state, and I have not received the referral reward or additional usage benefit.

The invitation page currently provides no explanation about what is still required or whether the accounts are undergoing an eligibility check.

My account email and all invitee email addresses are intentionally redacted here because this is a public GitHub issue. I can provide the full account details privately to OpenAI staff if required.

The five invitation records all currently show:

Pending

I would like to determine whether:

• the referrals are still being processed;
• an additional qualifying Codex action is required;
• the invited accounts are not eligible;
• or the referral status is failing to update correctly.

If Codex usage is required, it would also be helpful to clarify exactly what action completes the referral, for example whether the invitee must send their first Codex message or successfully complete a Codex task.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

1. Open ChatGPT Desktop / Codex using an account that has access to the referral promotion.

2. Open the "Invite friends" referral feature.

3. Send referral invitations to multiple users.

4. Have the invited users accept the invitation and sign in to the ChatGPT Desktop application with the invited accounts.

5. Have the invited users open Codex, submit a coding/task prompt, and wait for Codex to complete the task.

6. Return to the referral tracking page ("View your invitations").

7. Observe that all invitation records remain in the Pending state.

In my case, this happened with five separate invited accounts.

All five invitations are visible in the referral tracking interface, so the invitation records appear to have been created successfully.

However, none of them transitions to a completed or rewarded state.

No error message is displayed.

Session ID: Not applicable / unavailable for the referral UI.

Token limit usage: Not applicable.

Context window usage: Not applicable.

What is the expected behavior?

After an invited user accepts the referral, meets the eligibility requirements, and completes the required qualifying action, I expect the invitation status to change from Pending to Completed and the corresponding referral reward to be applied.

If the invited user has not completed the required action or is not eligible, the referral interface should clearly indicate the reason instead of remaining indefinitely in a generic Pending state.

For example, the interface could distinguish between:

• Awaiting qualifying activity
• Eligibility check in progress
• Completed
• Not eligible

At minimum, I would expect the referral page to make it clear whether additional Codex activity is required.

Additional information

This issue affects five separate invitations from the same referring account.

My referring account email is:

9826****45@qq.com

The invited email addresses are redacted below because this is a public issue:

• 3221****73@qq.com
• monster****97@outlook.com
• monsterr****91@gmail.com
• qqmonster****@gmail.com
• 1152****13@qq.com

All five currently appear as Pending in the "View your invitations" page.

I have a screenshot showing all five Pending invitations, but the original screenshot contains personally identifiable email addresses. I can provide an appropriately redacted screenshot publicly and provide the original information privately to OpenAI Support if needed.

The referral promotion presented in the application describes inviting friends to use ChatGPT Desktop, where they can ask questions, complete work, and use Codex to build.

What is currently unclear is whether ordinary ChatGPT Desktop usage is sufficient or whether a specific Codex qualifying action must be completed before the referral changes from Pending.

If this requires account-level investigation, I am happy to provide the full email addresses, approximate invitation times, and other referral details through a private OpenAI support channel.

Start with the ChatGPT Desktop “Invite friends” and “View your invitations” flow, reproducing the five-invitation case described in the issue. Check whether the referral records expose eligibility or qualifying-action status; done means identifying why the invitations remain pending or documenting the account-level information required for OpenAI Support.