diff --git a/drb-c2-core/app/internal/transcription.py b/drb-c2-core/app/internal/transcription.py
index 6f8513c..313ffed 100644
--- a/drb-c2-core/app/internal/transcription.py
+++ b/drb-c2-core/app/internal/transcription.py
@@ -93,6 +93,42 @@ def _is_degenerate(text: str, segments: list[dict]) -> bool:
     return False
 
 
+_billing_reported = False
+
+
+def _log_transcribe_failure(call_id: str, exc: Exception) -> None:
+    """
+    Log a transcription failure, escalating an unpayable account to ERROR once.
+
+    Transcription failing returns None and the pipeline carries on by design, so
+    a per-call WARNING is invisible: no transcript means no extraction, which
+    means no incident, and the only symptom is calls quietly arriving empty. A
+    network blip is genuinely a warning. An exhausted balance is not -- it will
+    not fix itself and it takes the whole pipeline down with it, so it says so
+    once, loudly, and names the fix.
+
+    The same failure mode already bit the Gemini correlator twice (a retired
+    model ID, then a depleted balance), which is why this is worth the code.
+    """
+    global _billing_reported
+    text = str(exc)
+    low  = text.lower()
+
+    if ("insufficient_quota" in low or "billing" in low
+            or "credit" in low or "exceeded your current quota" in low):
+        if not _billing_reported:
+            _billing_reported = True
+            logger.error(
+                "Transcription: the OpenAI account cannot be billed -- EVERY call is "
+                "now stored with no transcript, so extraction, correlation and "
+                "incidents are all dead downstream. Top up at "
+                f"https://platform.openai.com/settings/organization/billing. API said: {text}"
+            )
+        return
+
+    logger.warning(f"Transcription failed for call {call_id}: {text}")
+
+
 async def transcribe_call(
     call_id: str,
     gcs_uri: str,
@@ -114,7 +150,7 @@ async def transcribe_call(
             _sync_transcribe, gcs_uri, talkgroup_name
         )
     except Exception as e:
-        logger.warning(f"Transcription failed for call {call_id}: {e}")
+        _log_transcribe_failure(call_id, e)
         return None, []
 
     if transcript: