I tried to promote a post on X for $25 for one day, but X wouldn’t allow it. The final pay button was grayed out. I added a new credit card, cleared my cache and cookies, and tried several times, but it still didn’t work. Finally, the promotion went through on the new card I added, but X charged me $500 for a single post. I would never pay $500 for one post. My bank can’t dispute the charge until it’s fully posted. So far, X has only charged me $5.
X makes it incredibly easy to accidentally pay $500 to promote a post. When you click “Promote,” the first payment option is set to a high amount as shown in the screenshot above. It’s set at $100 a day for five days. If you don’t move the blue sliders to the left, you end up paying $500. I knew to move the blue sliders or else it would charge me $500. So I’m not sure how I selected that option or if I did at all.
This is how I thought I had it. $25.00 for one day. But I got charged $500.
My X Ads Business account is confusing and doesn’t seem to work properly. As you can see below, it shows a few old ads still running, but I only promote posts for one day. So I’m not sure why these say running still. I keep moving the slider to indicate “Not Running,” but every time I refresh the page, it reverts to “Running” in green. Additionally, the second ad marked “Running” in green, I can’t turn off with the slider. Hopefully, that is just a glitch. The very top one ID 39167226 is the 500 dollar promoted ad that I paused immediately after the purchase.
So I asked Grok. The first thing Grok led me to was this:
b. Notwithstanding any other terms set forth in this Agreement, all payments made in connection with promoting a Post are final and not refundable or exchangeable, except as required by applicable law. Refunds or credits are not provided for any unused or partially used product or services and a product or service may not be canceled or paused after it is purchased.
However, Grok provided several other options, one of which was that, as a Premium member, I could message @Premium, I sent a message to @Premium at 11:06 AM on Friday, May 23, 2025. In the message, I explained what happened, included screenshots, and noted that I paused the campaign before it could start. I also sent a message to @AdsSupport at 2:01 PM.
I hope X refunds my money. If not, I’ll be extremely upset, and I’ll never pay to promote a post again. I’ll share my story every day until I die, posting it everywhere that matters and writing to newspapers about it. For now, I remain hopeful that Elon Musk has improved X and that there are people there who provide customer service and care about their customers.