Cost cutting??

Bilt Rewards and American AAdvantage partnership terminates in June

Scroll back to 677 to read earlier report and discussion. I think we will see more of this as the airlines come to see Bilt as a "credit card" partner rather than as a "rent rewards" program. I imagine that Barclays and Citi complained, and I expect that Chase is also complaining.

Not at all my area of expertise (if there is any) and I didn’t stay … never mind.

Please expound upon the practical differences.

Complained about who to whom?

I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

Citi and Barclays share the right to issue co-branded cards for American Airlines in the USA, and now Wells Fargo is issuing a card which allows the cardholder to earn AAdvantage miles. Citi and Barclays may see this as diminishing the value of their relationship with AA. I imagine that if Bilt is seen as a "rent rewards" program, which happens to have its own co-branded credit card, this is not a breach of contract, but Citi and Barclays may nonetheless see it as a problem because Wells Fargo has a massive retail presence.

Thank you, I hadn’t thought of it that way.

Regardless of the reason, loss of AA is a decrease (some might write devaluation) of Bilt’s perks which supports some people’s contention that Bilt is not sustainable, albeit not for the reasons I originally embraced the Bilt unsustainable theory.

Yes, I think everyone will be keeping an eye on Hyatt after this, and to a more limited extent, United.

Bilt is far more known now compared to when the AA partnership launched three years ago; much of that undoubtedly is due to them moving the cobrand card from an unknown issuer to WF.

AA is also allegedly in the process of renegotiating their contacts with Citi and Barclays, so there are a lot of moving parts on their end right now. AA of course has made it clear they want to increase their cobrand card spend, so they have an incentive to force people onto their cobrand cards. And eliminating a competitor to Citi and Barclays may also help AA extract more value for themselves from the upcoming renewal agreements.

Given that for most people, Bilt has essentially no sign-up bonus and churning it is useless, I'd presume the impact on transfer bonuses to AA and other transfer partners is vastly lower than other cards in circulation.

It may not be that AA is raising the cost of their miles to Bilt, it may be that they simply are ending the program, for the reasons MIA listed.

That wouldn't support the idea that Bilt is unsustainable.

And whether you believe it or not, Bilt has claimed that they are already profitable (not really sure I believe it, at least without some accounting sleight of hand).

(My medical career spanned the time from “it makes sense and that’s the way we’ve always done it” to “evidence based medicine”, I now view many things that same new way.) Agree that absent a SUB, churning is pointless.

There’s a dearth of evidence and/or statistics regarding the number or percentage of new Bilt cardmembers who get the quasi-SUB and regarding churning Bilt MC. Based on following this thread very carefully for the past year and my extensive research for an accurate and thorough Wikipost, my estimation at this time is that most people do receive the quasi-SUB offer.

Please refer us to available datapoints regarding Bilt quasi-SUB and churning Bilt MC.

Im not saying most people dont get the bonus. Im saying most people won't actively max or even USE the bonus, given the short term it's valid for and how little it's advertised. I'd estimate most people get the card for what it's advertised for - paying rent.

​​​​​ Good points.

Regarding churning, I remain intensely curious. Bilt has only been around for 3 years so few (if any) reports of churning. Agreed that the limitations of the quasi-SUB make it a far less attractive candidate for churning. Counting toward 5/24 is the churning (attempt) deal breaker for me, similar to 5/24 effects precluding me from attempting a q̂* 7 year Hilton Aspire churn.

Maybe a Bilt biz version :confused:? (Yeah, yeah, yeah please don't dash my dreams against the rocks, I know it's WAY far-fetched ;).)

(* “q̂” used in the medical abbreviation context of “every”)

Bilt's status program is somewhat anti-churning also. Once you get status, you maximize the miles you have saved in the program. You don't want to empty it out and start over.

follow up point- after some back and forth with this rep I got a courtesy 500 points - not the 10,000+ I was supposed to get ~$2500 vacation rental. I get the generic "welcome to bilt" email from the CEO - I respond to it thinking nothing will happen, within 30 minutes I get a response saying they made and error and I got the bonus points credited to my account!

I was pleasantly shocked

You saw this, right?

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/alas...gests-yes.html

That's what I was responding to when it was mentioned upthread ;)

Looks like it's real. As of today, I can link my Alaska program.

Bingo. Plus they're handing out considerable amounts of free points over time. I regret nothing about the "damage" it's done to my 5/24.

Is anyone able to download or otherwise save their Bilt statement in Safari on a Mac? I can do it in Chrome, but I get strange errors each month when I try to do it in Safari.

Asked Bilt for clarification of the above.

Replies: “To start earning points for your Lyft rides you will need to link your Lyft account with your Bilt Rewards account. Please note that linking the payment method you use as default for your Lyft account to Bilt Rewards will not ensure you will earn points for Lyft Rides.” and “You will go to the Lyft app and select Rewards on the menu. Once there, you will scroll until you locate the “Loyalty Rewards” section and select “Bilt Rewards” as your active loyalty rewards partner.”

I couldn’t find the same screenshot today, maybe it’s gone, maybe Bilt realized it was confusing.

So, no free lunch triple dip. For Lyft rides - Bilt points OR different loyalty partner point/miles, not both.

Does anyone know if it's possible to pay for rent in a foreign country (the UK) using the Bilt card? I currently live in London and pay rent here (as my current/primary residence). My landlord currently asks that I pay rent via a bank transfer from a UK bank account (which I have been doing). Does anyone know of a potential workaround here to earn Bilt points? Thanks in advance.

And now I've got 2 more transactions that aren't posting. Second time this has happened in the 6 months I've had this card.

Complained to Bilt about the delay in points posting and was told I had to wait 7 days, as opposed to the 5 days they told me the last time this happened. At this point, I'm seriously considering cancelling the card. I don't see the point in using (or even holding) the card if I can't count on the points to post reliably.

what? with most cards you dont get the points until the monthly statement closes. bilt is an outlier.

Yes, but with every other card I have, I can count on those points to post reliably, even if they don't post until the statement closes. If I can't count on Bilt points to post reliably, the card isn't any good to me.

Id consider "within 7 days of purchase" fairly reliable.

I’ve had this issue from time to time with my Bilt card, and my experience has been that if the points don’t post shortly after purchase, as is typical, they won’t post at all.

With Bilt, as soon as you make a purchase, the purchase will show as pending in the Bilt app. Within a few business days, the points will either post (if you’ve already made five transactions), or the points will show as pending, once five transactions have been made.

When my points haven’t posted, what happens is that a few days after the purchase first shows up as pending, the line item just disappears completely.

If they actually posted, yes. But they're not going to if it's been this long.

This mirrors my experience. And then you have to spend time and energy chasing Bilt for your points.

I've never had this happen with any other card, and now it's happend twice in around 6 months. I've had instances of not getting the right amount of points, but never not getting any points.

I also have this problem, 4 charges with no points. I was told:

"We haven't received word yet, but I can confirm this is impacting transactios that occurred around March 20th (For you, these were March 18th and 19th). Once the issue has been resolved, your points will be added."

Second time this has happened, first resolution was speedy and effortless with the points posting within a day of filing a complaint. This case appears to be different. If this becomes a regular occurrence, it will be difficult to justify keeping the card.

Seems this is a widespread glitch for everyone; which is actually the second big glitch this month as earlier there was a glitch with rent points properly posting for March

My two transactions were March 20 & 22.

The card is worth it to me even if the only points I get from it are my HOA fees in points. It's a free card, after all.

Well written, violently agree. Even though I’m a Doubting Thomas regarding Bilt’s long term viability, it doesn’t cost a penny to charge my monthly HOA fee and 4 other small charges, usually 2 grocery store self-checkouts divided to 2 charges each, for Bilt to pointsetize (see Wikipost first paragraph original author’s note last sentence) at no cost those HOA fees. Win win AFAICT. Only downside other than a bit of my time is that Bilt counts toward Chase 5/24.

To my surprise, the first transaction (Subway, March 20) posted this evening. No change to the second one yet. Even if it does end up posting, this has left a very bitter taste in my mouth.

Two out of four missing transactions have posted for me. I sent a follow-up email to support to make sure the missing charges haven't been overlooked.

Bilt rent days
 

Considering maximizing spending since I recently got the card. While I will try to put some restaurant charges that day(does door dash count etc) it will mostly be non bonused spend which I’ve confirmed gets 2x. It says max 10k bonus points on the 1st of the month. So does that mean spending $10k ordinarily at 1x points would earn 20k points and that’s the max?

Second transaction posted. Still extremely annoyed at this whole thing, though, My feelings about Bilt are not nearly as good as they were a week and a half ago.

I think thats the correct number of "bonus" points you would earn. You could spend more than 10K on rent day and get the 1X points for them as well as the max 10K bonus

Qs about the Signup Spend Bonus
 

So I received the card and the offer today. Despite (or because of) a +800 credit score and lots of other cards with limits up to $30K, they assigned me a low credit limit of $10,000. So I won't be able to maximize unless I pay back the $10K immediately and they reset my limit. Others have reported they don't do that very fast. Any other DPs? And...

• Do the 5 days in which you're able to generate the signup offer bonus start the day after you receive the card, or the day of (which is actually a partial day)?
• Do you get additional bonus points for signup offer spending on Rent Day?

Thanks...

If you transfer from a Wells Fargo deposit account, I'm pretty sure that frees up the credit fastest.

Pretty sure the five days (if you get it) starts the day you receive the card.

No additional points for rent day.

For me the 5 days started the day after I received the card so it was really 6 days.