Upgrading Lite to Standard account
My Text-to-Speech Lite account reached its 10,000 character limit on 30 December 2018, so I tried to upgrade to a Standard account, but I keep getting a Bluemix userinfo error: Forbidden error message.
Even when I go to my account settings to do an Account Upgrade to Pay-As-You-Go, when I click on Add Credit Card, I get the same error message in the same window (I shouldn't really need to do this, as my credit card is already registered on my account anyway, but I tried and got the exact same thing).
Even as of 01 January 2019, the Lite limit has not been reset, and strangely, it actually shows as Inactive. Please see the image...
Any suggestions?
@chughts Thanks. I have already done that, and received a case-number in an automatically-generated email message. I am just desperate to have someone attend to it, as I cannot continue working now. I updated my post by adding a screenshot, showing the Inactive status. Have you ever come across such a situation?
Lite plan services tend to go inactive when they have not been used for 30 days, in this case 30 days since the last API call - however, I assume that the last API call you made was on the 30 December? Also, to my knowledge, the Lite tier allowances should reset on the 1st of the calendar month.
You've done the right thing here to raise a ticket but assuming that you have basic (free) tier support, there may be a delay in the ticket being worked.
A couple of things to try...... 1) Does using the new console (via cloud.ibm.com) give you any better messages? 2) Can you create a new text to speech service (either Lite or Standard plan)?
@James_Belton Thanks for your detailed reply. Your assumption is right; I have not stopped using it. Been using the TTS non-stop since I created it. When it ran out on the 30th, I could neither upgrade to a standard account nor did it reset on the 1st. I logged onto the new console and, strangely enough, it shows all my services as "provisioned" with a green light next to them, including the very TTS that shows as "Inactive" in the old console. See the attached image please. I will try to create a new TTS instance, but does that mean I will first have to delete the current one? Also, should I do that in the old console or the new one? (Sorry, I know these are silly questions, but since I am stuck, I would rather ask before making things worse by deleting, etc...) Thanks in advance, 
Hi @JoshyJosh I would continue to use the new console at cloud.ibm.com - it's better integrated, faster and will continue to be developed, whereas console.bluemix.net is likely to be wound up during the coming months.
Normally, you can only have one Lite instance of a service at a time, so it's likely that to create another Text to Speech service on a Lite plan, you will need to delete the existing one first - though if you try beforehand, the worst that you will get is a message that pretty much tells you this :)
You can create as many Text to Speech services on Standard plans as you like, providing of course that you have a PayGo account and you can of course keep your Lite plan too. If you upgrade and use a Standard plan, then there's a charge per 1K characters but you can use the customisation features. You can use some of the features under the billing and usage screens to keep track of your usage (you should be able to see your usage of the Lite service here too) and if you need / want to, you can create billing alerts against your account / services if you want to be notified when your spend hits a certain point (note the alarm does not stop the service!).
@James_Belton Thanks for your help. After spending half-hour over chat with an IBM representative, I figured taking your advice is the best way to go, so I deleted the old instance and created a new one using the new console, which works fine now. It is still a Lite plan though, but I will see if I need to upgrade it later. Cheers
No worries @JoshyJosh, glad that you have gotten going again! I guess that the point at which you might need to consider upgrading to a Standard plan is when you are hitting the limits of the Lite plan more regularly or you need to use other features not available with the Lite plan. Good luck with your project! Cheers, James