Sadly no. I didn't get the offer, nor did my friend who signed up several months after I did.

Bummer. After all I went through to get this card AT THIS SPECIFIC TIME (10 - 14 days prior to estimated tax payment due date), it would add salt to the wound to NOT get the offer.

I called yesterday late afternoon after my early morning approval. I was told the card is not sent by a trackable method and will arrive in 7-10 days. I certainly hope (as is often the case) that information here at FT (quote above) is correct and the customer service representative’s information is incorrect.

There are a couple of posts above referring to tax payments with this card, do we think that (estimated) tax payments will earn points and count toward whatever quasi-SUB (5x/5 days/max 50K) might be offered?

I probably made a mistake on my application for this card where I checked “Own” for housing status, probably should have put “rent”. I paid off my condominium mortgage a year ago, almost put “$0.00” for monthly payment on the Bilt MC application, but ended up putting “$x,xxx.xx” (monthly condo common charges).

From a brief perusal of the Bilt-pay-rent-by-check set-up procedures it appears it must be done on the mobile app and cannot be done on the full PC website. Is that correct? Thanks again.

I haven't used their service that pushes a check payment, but you can get the checking account/routing number from the website. This is what I used to pull an ACH payment from my HOA's property management company. The transaction did earn points.

(Light bulb turning on, elevator getting to the top floor, 6th can added to make it a 6 pack, all 52 cards collected making it a full deck …) As the expression goes, please “explain it to me like I’m a 6 year old”. :) :) :)

My condo management company can and does, only for the past few years, at my request, initiate an automatic ACH transfer withdrawal from a bank account (instead of my mailing a check or initiating it via a Bill Pay process which results in the bank mailing a check as the condo management company is not an existing ACH transfer partner).

And I’ve been of the (perhaps erroneous) thought that only rent payments, ACH or mailed checks, initiated by Bilt would earn points.

Does “to pull an ACH payment from my HOA's property management company” mean that the ACH payment is initiated by your condo management company to withdraw the payment from your Bilt account (rather than Bilt initiating the payment to deposit the payment to your condo management account)?

Does the quote above accurately imply that an ACH transfer initiated by my condo management company, from my Bilt account using the routing and account numbers as provided on the website, will earn Bilt Rewards points? Thank you very much.

Yes, that's right. I have the condo management company take the payment from the Bilt account (for which Bilt provides an account number and routing number that resembles a regular checking account).

I only have one data point so far for this, but, yes, I earned points last month when I had the condo management company pull the payment. I was a bit worried at first because the condo management company charges a small, fixed fee for such a payment, and the fee registers separately from the main HOA payment. The $2.95 fee posted first, but I earned points on both transactions. I pay multiple months at a time to amortize the fee, so I won't have another data point until next year. I could avoid the fee by having Bilt initiate the payment and mailing a check, but a purely electronic way is less prone to a lost or misplaced mailed payment.

Understanding that a condo payment might not be considered by Bilt to be rental payment and having thought that the only way to earn points (for rental/condo payments not in the Bilt Rewards Alliance) was if Bilt initiates the payment, these questions have been important for my evaluation of the Bilt Mastercard.

Thank you very much for all your thoughtful replies, greatly appreciated, definitely your good deed for the day/week :tu:. As you can tell, I’m detail oriented, it’s terrific to receive answers that are timely and pertinent. Thanks again.

Seems also that having the condo management company initiate pulling the payment allows you to have easy confirmation that the payment has been properly completed.

I was unaware of an important aspect of online bill paying (related to Bilt) until a few years ago when I had to change day-to-day checking accounts as Schwab was terminating day-to-day checking functions for the type of account I had. With existing (back-up rarely used) Chase and USAA checking accounts I learned that there are (at least) 2 completely different ways for a bank’s Bill Pay system to deduct a (mailed, not an ACH) Bill Pay amount from one’s account. At that time, Chase deducted a mailed Bill Pay payment from my account balance when the check was mailed, leaving me no way to know if the check was ever received (and properly credited). At that time (and still now) USAA deducts a mailed Bill Pay payment from my account balance when the check is deposited by the recipient and clears my USAA account, thus I have proof the check was received. (USAA is now still my day-to-day checking account.)

Thus I’m wondering if Bilt initiates a mailed condo payment, does the charge to the Bilt credit card occur when the check is mailed OR when the check clears after being deposited by the condo management company? (My limited understanding is that if Bilt mails a “rental” payment, the amount appears as a charge to the Bilt credit card, I hope that’s a correct understanding.) Thanks again.

Heads up that there are reports this week on Reddit of Bilt accounts with the credit card being shut down for very odd reasons. Data points are not clear but for some reason the accounts (who all claim they were legitimately paying rent via ACH) are being flagged and being asked to provided copies of leases for verification. One poster claims she moved recently and is no longer paying rent via Bilt, another claims her two year lease was rejected because it was not signed within the past year; both accounts were shut down. Another account was shut down because the user was only using the credit card for small charges to meet the 5 transaction minimum per month, and Bilt claimed the “micro transactions” were against the T&Cs. All very odd.

At least it’s just a shutdown from Bilt and/or Wells Fargo, small players in the points and miles game. Even if it’s extended to all WF products, it wouldn’t be as crushing (for most people) as a Chase or AmEx shutdown.

Yes, the $2.95 fee is a peace of mind fee because I don't know if Bilt mails a check otherwise if the payment is not part of their alliance. I group my HOA payments so that they're semiannual and the fee is < 0.15% of the transaction amount.

I'll monitor for this and report back if there's adverse action on my account. I'd have to search through this thread or Reddit, but there was someone purporting to be a representative for Bilt, indicating that HOA payments were specifically allowed.

I would also need to read the fine print of the T&Cs, but there wasn't any overt messaging in the marketing materials indicating a minimum purchase amount for the 5 monthly transactions. In my case, I place unaligned spend on this card where I have discretion over the transaction date to happen on the 1st of the month. This is simply maximizing rewards. I have noticed that some online transactions have failed on the 1st of the month, but since I didn't try on other days I can't say if this is a pattern.

Yeah, I am curious if a shutdown is isolated to the Bilt account only, which would be my guess, or all WF products.

Regardless, I would relish a CFPB complaint if my account gets closed for my use case. :)

A disturbing Reddit data point from this afternoon- someone said their rent fluctuates every month because the building's utilities are not individually metered, so the landlord splits the actual costs between the tenants each month. The variations were less than $100 each month.

Apparently this month, Bilt sent out their rent check, then flagged the account due to the monthly variations in rent payment and stopped payment on the check, and never told the user. It was only when the check bounced with the landlord that the user contacted Bilt, found out their account had been suspended, and was requested to submit a copy of their lease for review, which could take 3 weeks.

This is particularly concerning, because it says to me that there are things going on behind the scenes at Bilt that are driving them to this type of action, and also they're clearly under water when it comes to customer service. How could you suspend a user and stop payment on their rent check without even telling them???

I can see the Bilt routing and account numbers to give to my condo management company to start initiating monthly ACH pulls for my monthly charges but I don’t have any of the other information as required on the (partial) form below. Presumably I should check “Checking (account)”. Please provide Bilt or WF Financial Institution name and address or direct me to where on the Bilt website I can find that information. (The management company requests a voided check, presumably that’s not available from Bilt and I’ll need to tell the management company that it’s not available.) Thank you.

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...c2bee22b5a.jpg

Searching on the routing number gives you:

Name: Evolve Bank And Trust
Address: Memphis, TN
Phone: 901-259-0796

I'd just use that.

When I rented, my situation was similar. The apartment complex added fractional trash, water, and sewer bills to the rent statement each month, causing a slight variation.

This is all the more reason to do have your property management company do an ACH pull if that's an option.

A web search for the provided routing number corresponds to Evolve Bank & Trust for me as well. I agree with the information josephstern indicated.

I'm wondering if the people having issues (especially with rent) are in properties which are members of the Alliance that Bilt promotes? It's certainly not a good look, and I'm considering cashing out my points much more frequently.

Unlikely as if it is (mine is) the rent ledger is reflected on the Bilt site, including the breakdown of extra line items like trash/sewage/admin/etc, and the total account balance. In fact my property just recently removed their standalone rent portal so everyone has to use Bilt even if they don't have the credit card. I suspect this is another element of their business model as they probably get some amount of money for allowing property management companies to outsource the rent payment handling to Bilt.