The Mesa Homeowners card abruptly closed all accounts last Friday, with no warning. This is particularly surprising because they had just added Omni as a partner. We’ll talk about the aftermath in today’s podcast episode.
Aftermath of the major Mesa mess
Watch here:
Or listen here (or click “Follow” on the player below to select your preferred podcast app instead):
(00:06) – Read more about the abrupt closure of Mesa homeowners credit cards here
(03:36) – What was the Mesa Homeowners card?
You can learn about what the Mesa Homeowners card was here
(04:54) – Lessons learned: Should we hesitate to jump into “too good to be true” deals?
(08:49) – What about Rove Miles?
(13:30) – What about Bilt?
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Music Credit – Beach Walk by Unicorn Heads
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why did tim cash out at 0.6cpp instead of the points transfer workaround (airplane mode) well publicized on Doctor of Credit/reddit/Omaat/etc. Big Yikes
He cashed out before anyone reported that workaround
Thanks to the FM team for notifying about Mesa crash last week which enabled a points rescue. Now that Mesa is dead, are there any other cards that offer daycare and tax payments as reward categories?
For anyone interested, Rove is matching Mesa points up to 5k https://giveaway.rovemiles.com/matchyourmesa
Ah, so Rove is next… (then BILT).
Four-plus years in, there are still those who think that Bilt is a scam, it will run out of VC money, and it is going to implode. And, the venom still flows. And, anyone who says anything positive about Bilt will similarly receive the venom. There seems to be intense hatred towards certain individuals who work at Bilt. And, about the fact that Bilt has no formal SUB. It’s stuck in their craw. (As the card is essentially a mimic of the CSP, what’s the deal? If it’s not a fit, fine, move on.)
I don’t have any business relationship with Bilt. I have been a cardholder since its inception. And, I’ve cleaned up. Admittedly, in some respects, it’s not as lucrative as it once was. But, in other respects, it’s more lucrative. Rakuten > Bilt > Hyatt. Rakuten > Bilt > Alaska. And, if one is patient, up to 100% transfer bonuses. Anyone who says this isn’t of value to some people is not being honest.
Bloggers will have conflicts. In the present case, bad optics. However, the FM team is the best you’re going to get. And, if someone actually believes that the FM team can’t be trusted, why are you even on this website? I might disagree with their approach to this or that but I don’t think the FM team is disingenuous.
No, Lee. No one is thinking BILT is a scam. We’ve realized how it’s been propped up for years thanks to Wells Fargo. As soon as that too-big-to-fail bank exits, BILT is toast. I want them to last. I’ve enjoyed earning 70K points per year with them and transferring most of it to Hyatt for maximum value. Wish they could’ve found another sucker bank to pay for it all. Cardless will inevitably pull another Celtic on all us BILT folks.
I’m not as concerned as others below about the Bilt ad. But you should have briefly mentioned (make this a policy going forward) that Bilt is an ad supporter of FM when discussing Bilt.
Fair comment.
You don’t have to be a ‘thought’ leader or a ‘thot’ leader in this space to know that BILT is gonna struggle as soon as it’s too-big-to-fail-bank daddy WF exits in February 2026.
I agree, I should have and will do so going forward.
Greg I imagine you know how much the Bilt ad is paying you. I hope you also realize how much it’s costing you.
Sorry for the preachy comment. It’s just that hearing you read a Bilt commercial on the same show you analyze the viability of the Bilt program seems like a really bad look. Painfully cringe as my kids would say.
I know everyone else does it but imo FM succeeds precisely because it’s not everyone else. When it comes to conflict of interest appearances matter a lot. A stellar reputation takes years to earn but can fade quickly.
Fair point. I agree. The optics here are bad. As you probably know, we do not let advertisers or financial relationships affect the content of our podcasts or posts in any way. But yes, I fully acknowledge that that isn’t obvious to everyone and that ads like this can give the wrong impression. One of the reasons we joined the Voyascape network was that most of their ads have been for destinations and travel gear — things that wouldn’t suggest a conflict of interest for us. In practice, none of those types ads have materialized for us yet, and it happened that Bilt was our first podcast ad. Going forward, once this Bilt contract is over, we’ll try to avoid advertisers that are likely to cause the appearance of a conflict of interest. Also going forward, whenever we talk about a company that is also a podcast advertiser, we’ll clearly disclose that in the segment.
A little background about how the podcast ads work:
When recording this particular episode about the Mesa mess, I thought about disclosing that Bilt was an advertiser, but I realized that 1) that wouldn’t be true for YouTube viewers; and 2) it wouldn’t be true for anyone listening a few months from now. In retrospect, I should have declared that “At the time of this recording, Bilt is an audio-podcast advertiser, but that does not in any way affect the content of our podcast” (or something like that). It didn’t occur to me to qualify it that way, but I will going forward if/when we discuss Bilt (or any other podcast advertiser).
Side note: In practice, the conflict of interest encourages the opposite behavior than what people may expect. Sure, there’s a small financial interest in keeping advertisers happy, but we have orders of magnitude larger interest in keeping the trust of our listeners. As a result, since recording the Bilt ad, I’ve actually found myself almost hoping that Bilt would make some customer-unfriendly moves so that we could prove our independence. To be clear: I don’t really want Bilt to do bad things, but if/when they do, we won’t hesitate to call them out on the podcast and elsewhere (just as we did last year when Bilt nerfed Rent Day doubling and buried the news in the T&C: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCM8otj1asI&t=1249s).
Thank you for such a detailed, thoughtful and reassuring response. I especially appreciated hearing about the background of the ad and your advertiser plans going forward. It’s obvious you value integrity which to be honest was the whole reason I would bother to comment in the first place. Looking forward to many more podcasts in the future.
“Bilt has a great business model!” – The guy who gets paid to shill Bilt ads
Sad to see FM turning into a clown show right before our eyes
If you have doubts about Bilt’s business model or financials, I would encourage you to visit Pitch Book or any of several other funding/M&A site.
It’s disturbing. Gary at VFTW is also shilling for BILT. Ever since he posted a review of his Blade helicopter ride from JFK into the city… was like, okay, he’s bought-and-paid-for. (No, no.. it was his BILT Platinum status…psh.)
Don’t eitherv of you ever try to get a job in due dilligence. All the wrong questions.
Lol at an ad read for Bilt followed 3 minutes later by a segment where you try to convince everyone that their Bilt points are safe and not to start a run on the bank by pulling their points out.
At this point you guys are just trying to troll all the people who call you shills, huh?
There is some irony there.
That said, if you think FM are shills, who isn’t in this industry? They are about as objective as you can get, and call out bad bank and travel loyalty behavior regularly. Plus they make a point to publicize best offers on cards and bank accounts even when that means rewarding readers, or no one, rather than using a commission earning link.
I actually generally agree with them about Bilt, and I’ve been reading long enough to trust them to express their true opinions.
But if I was a new-ish person to points and miles who never read this blog and, say, just lost a bunch in the Mesa debacle and was listening to this for guidance, I would absolutely have come away with the impression that they are scammers who were being paid off by Bilt and were trying to play me for a fool and I would assume that the whole blog was not to be trusted. And then if I were to later find out that Bilt had also paid for them to take a junket to Moskito Island and that they had consulted on the Bilt program…
FM has created the appearance of a conflict of interest with Bilt and they don’t seem to realize it. On the credit card offers page they disclose that they use affiliate links. But for some reason these advertising and other affiliations with Bilt aren’t being disclosed when they write about them. (Oddly, the credit card page also discloses that AmEx is a FM advertiser when listing AmEx cards, but doesn’t include a similar disclosure on the Bilt card.)
Wow, that’s so real ‘do your own research’ vibes right there. Sure, currently, BILT is fine, but as soon as WF exits, it’s time is limited… they are not making up enough ‘organic’ transactions for their loses paying out 1% on everyone’s rent.
That’s fair, and I agree that the optics on the recent type of Bilt ads inserted into this same podcast are different than the past “any positive news of Bilt makes you a shill” comments. There’s a vocal subset of people in this hobby who post something to the effect of the latter on any blog piece that speaks well of Bilt, which I think made me gloss over this particular scenario. The conflict of interest appearance is larger here and I’m glad to see that Greg has already acknowledged it in some of these comments and will hopefully have it addressed quickly.
I wondered how that would be navigated lol. Bilt’s business model was glossed over a bit but it’s still true that they are not in the same precarious category as Mesa. I still think shifting to Cardless from WF is a much bigger deal than they do given what it indicates about long term card economics. Greg laid out well what Bilt hopes to achieve overall and I’m sure they believe they’ll achieve it. But it’s not exactly like it has been achieved. VC money continues to flow in though and that’s really all that matters.
What is the source on which you base your comment about Bilt’s dependence on VC money to fund cash flow? You are wrong. Bilt has been cash flow positive/profitable for over two years. Go to any of the VC/M&A sites to verify this.
Great point. However, I did not say that they are dependent on VC money for cash flow. They do however continue to raise capital as most do. Yes their financial metrics look fine although how much of that was effectively subsidized by WF we don’t know. Maybe not much and the new cardless deal will be fine.
No, RH2, stick with it; don’t let shills like Lee convince you otherwise with faux-intellect. BILT’s days are numbered after WF exits. They’ve been footing the bills for Ankur’s pipe dream.
Finally, I find others who expect BILT to crumble after its too-big-to-fail-bank-backer Wells Fargo exits in early February 2026. BILT 2.0 is the beginning of the end. Don’t hoard points.
Luckily transferred my Mesa points last month and only have 6k orphaned in Mesa jail now. I wasn’t able to transfer/redeem those remaining points over the weekend.
You are a lucky Czar. Be sure to do the same with BILT. They’re next.