Bilt released details of its new credit cards on Wednesday…but it was so confusing, they tried to clarify it with more confusion.
Breaking News: Bilt’s sudden & crazy u-turn
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(00:07) – Bilt released details of its new credit cards on Wednesday.
You can read more about Bilt 2.0 here
(00:12) – We’ve written extensively about it, and today (as we record this update), we dropped a full-length podcast about it
Find the full podcast here
(01:05) – Bilt heard all of us and doubled down with an even more confusing solution…
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I would like someone, anyone, to explain how this card works to someone who hasn’t used a credit csrd before.
They’ve done a superb job of turning off a potential customer from switching to Bilt for primary points earning. The confusion and the many questions other have will keep me in all the other bank ecosystems for now.
Visa, instead of Mastercard, allows use at Costco!
I really like that
Nevermind. Wrong info received on internet.
I did manage to get a minor answer out of support re Bilt Cash. I asked them specifically about limits when it comes to using Cash for hotel bookings via the travel portal. They said the limits of how much you can use are going to vary hotel by hotel. Sounds like they’re considering hotels individual merchants when it comes to caps, rather than applying a uniform cap across all hotels as a redemption category.
It’s a no for me… My brain hurts trying to figure all of this out.
I’m out. This is too confusing.
So the new structure doesn’t seem to make much of a difference if you are trying to earn the 1 point per $ spent on rent. You need to spend 75% of your rent to get 1point per $ which is the same amount you would need to spend at 4% bilt cash. $5000 rent x 75% = $3750 and $5000 x 3% processing fee = $150. $150/.04 Bilt cash earning = $3750. I guess maybe need to see which is more advantageous at each percentage level vs earning 4% Bilt cash? I had Bilt care pre 1.0 but didn’t qualify for a new card as I had opened other cards recently so my wife got the Bilt 1.0 card. Now we have to decide if it is still worth it to try using a new Bilt card or put it on the Alaska card or go back to paying with out landlord directly.
Sigh, after listening to this podcast. This recording is nothing but complaining. It did not give any constructive criticism. I guess frequentmiler did not get the affliate link , at least not yet.
LOL, the FM Bilt referrals literally say affiliate link on them.
Bilt is not sustainable. It’s so confusing that even those who are really paying attention can’t understand it. You can’t build a mass market rewards system where the masses are too confused to bother with it. Before it was too generous to those who know how to game the system, now it’s just a bunch of purposely convoluted nonsense, trying to be clever and nuanced, but failing. Who are the normies signing up for this what will subsidize outsized value for those who do the legwork? Nobody. This thing is a house of cards, it won’t last.
The way Bilt has handled this seems like the script of a Saturday Night Live skit
By my calc, if I spend exactly 25% of my mortgage on the Blue card, then I effectively earn 3x on spend. The marginal earnings to the 50% breakpoint is only 1x but I’m still ahead of the 2.33x option up to 37.5%. At the 50% breakpoint, it jumps back up to 2.5x, and only gets worse from there, with the 75% breakpoint being the same as the 2.33x “cash” option.
So the sweet spot is 25-37.5% of rent/mortgage. That works out to about $1,000-$1,500 per month for me. That gets me Bilt Silver and a milestone. I don’t see much incentive to put more than $1k on the card.
This is a win for me, as I was only earning points on my condo assessment and now can earn on my mortgage too. Bilt points will accumulate slowly but in my view they complement Chase quite well and I can combine for awards at common partners. In my view, this is a Freedom Unlimited killer (although I gave up on the Freedom Unlimited some time ago, opting for BOA cash back on non-bonused spend).
I guess BILT is really trying to hide the fact that the mortgage/rent payments are not made with credit cards anymore, it is strictly through ACH now?
I don’t have the angst that others are expressing throughout the points world. the Bilt link smoothly approved me for the top card. I’ll use the first year perks to offset rent payment fees while earning points, one way or another, plus earn 2 pts/$1 on my misc spend to enjoy the good variety of transfer partners. The math works for me. After the first year, we’ll see…
I think Bilt is trying really hard to win the Bonvoyed award for the year. We’re barely in January!
at this point, I don’t care what the value proposition is, the fact that it so confusing makes me want to cancel the card and forget about the program altogether. And I’m a grad applied math student…
To paraphrase Wile E Coyote, “So simple a child prodigy can understand it.”