In Tim’s post about the Alaska Airlines/Hawaiian Airlines merger yesterday, he noted that Bilt Rewards had removed Hawaiian as a transfer partner. We therefore wanted to publish this separate post to highlight that change just in case you missed it amongst the main Alaska/Hawaiian news.
This came to light after JT Genter at Award Wallet noticed that the Hawaiian Airlines transfer guide on the Bilt Rewards website was now displaying a 404 error message.
As our original 3-year agreement came to a close with HA, we were confident as reported this morning that the merger with AS would be approved. Given we are the only transfer partner Alaska has at a 1:1 ratio, the ability to book Hawaiian with Bilt points should return shortly.
— Richard Kerr (@KerrPoints) August 20, 2024
JT subsequently published this post where he highlights that Bilt in fact stopped offering Hawaiian as a transfer partner at the end of May. Apparently in late May Bilt had put a small notification over the Hawaiian Airlines option that “Hawaiian Airlines is pausing point transfers starting 5/31”. On June 1 though, Hawaiian Airlines completely disappeared as a transfer partner in the app, a change that largely went unnoticed.
Bilt clearly knew that this partnership would be ending on a specific date, so it’s disappointing that they once again neglected to give its customers any kind of proper heads up about an upcoming negative change to the program, other than hiding away in the app that points transfers would be paused – and specifically not stating that they’d be ending permanently. This is sadly the latest in an increasingly long line of poor-to-non-existent communication from Bilt about upcoming negative changes.
Ultimately this probably isn’t affecting too many people seeing as a) transferring Bilt points to Hawaiian wasn’t a great redemption option and b) very few people seem to have noticed this change. However, it’s a shame that rather than being open, honest and upfront about future changes that could have a negative impact on its customers, they’re instead repeatedly choosing to hide it away. Hopefully they start making more effort to not destroy the goodwill they Bilt (ahem) up over the last few years.
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The rent day 2x bonus on everything has also been removed sadly 🙁
Only 2x on dining and travel is available*
[…] Bilt Drops Hawaiian Airlines: Without notice, Bilt dropped Hawaiian Airlines as a transfer partner. See this post on Frequent Miler. […]
Classic rug pull from the makers of Bilt Kool Aid.
While we are talking about things that Bilt took away with no communication, the point.me searches seem to have disappeared from the app months ago. Presumably their partnership ended, but I still haven’t seen any reference to this anywhere.
Nope, it’s still there. Go to Travel… Flights, enter your search criteria, click Search, and then on the results screen switch from Bilt Travel Portal to Transfer Partners.
Ah, I see – they just combined the results in the search with their normal travel portal. I never would have searched in their travel portal, so I just thought it had disappeared. Thanks
Bilt started as a program to pay rent, as a startup, and signed deals based on that. Then they partnered with Wells, and became much larger, and I would guess partners wanted much different terms, if they wanted to be involved at all. What you are seeing is a business in adolescence…let’s see what it wants to be when it grows up.
Shame on you Bilt
The point that readers are missing is that the people at Bilt didn’t unilaterally decided to drop Hawaiian. The three-year contract with Hawaiian ended and was not renewed. The problem is that no notice was given to card holders that the contract was ending. As for other transfer partners, it will NOT be a matter of Bilt unilaterally deciding to drop a particular transfer partner at some random point in time. It will be that the contract is ending and will not be renewed (for whatever reason) and BILT CHOOSES NOT TO GIVE NOTICE OF SUCH. That’s the risk.
I’m hoping that it lasts for another year for us to get points out of the rent we pay here in NYC. After that, I’ll probably cancel the card
“Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot.” The Bilt card had its shining moment but that moment has now passed. Management’s recent pattern of communication leads me to a feeling of distrust. While I had been a great promoter of the Bilt card, I now recommend a person capture points for rent and nothing more. From another literary work, “If you want to do business with me, I’ll do business with you.” (Michael Corleone)
This one just really dogpiles on Bilt’s communications going in the gutter as it’s a departure from their own past precedent. Bilt gave a long notice of the American Airlines partnership ending so customers could decide whether to transfer out one more time – why end the Hawaiian partnership without doing any of the same? I’m sure the internal numbers show it was a much less used transfer option but it’s really about the optics not the volume.
The fact it’s apparently been missing since June 1 and was just discovered kind of shows it wasn’t very important to begin with.
True, but some people might have been saving up Bilt points with the hope of a Hawaiian transfer bonus.
In any case, not communicating changes is simply bad style.
I hope they talk about the possibility of speculatively transferring points to Hawaiian before they merge with Alaska and then getting Alaska points on the podcast this week.
Funny how no one noticed. Hawaiian miles are that lame
Not if you live in Hawaii and use HA as your go to airline !
It’s a Scooby Doo scene where the mask is pulled off of Bilt, only to show its true identity “Fintech”.
I am waitng for the day a company no-notice removes Virgin Atlantic as a transfer partner and Virgin Atlantic management complains that they weren’t notified.