Update 5/28/26: After publishing this post a couple of days ago, Richard Kerr of Bilt commented below to say that:
This is not accurate or true; no announcement has yet been made. – Kerr, Bilt
That was surprising seeing as our source was…Bilt themselves. As a result, I replied with the following, also providing a screenshot of said BLADE terms:
Would you mind advising what’s incorrect? The wording comes directly from the Bilt Cash Terms & Conditions on the Bilt website https://www.bilt.com/terms/bilt-cash
Richard didn’t provide any kind of reply but Bilt has scrubbed all mention of BLADE from the Bilt Cash terms and conditions since I pointed that out.
My guess is that some kind of older draft wording for the BLADE benefit was somehow accidentally added to the Bilt Cash terms and conditions, something that doesn’t exactly inspire one with confidence in their update process. The heading for the benefit included ‘(New – 3/13)’ which suggests they’d worked on that back on March 13, but it wasn’t (incorrectly) added to the terms and conditions until May 20 or May 21—more than two months later.
Based on the fact that Richard said that the description of the BLADE benefit wasn’t accurate or true, it sounds like their intentions for the benefit have changed to some extent at some point in the last couple of months. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what the precise details are if or when it eventually becomes a Bilt Cash redemption option.
~
When Bilt launched the concept of Bilt Cash several months ago, there were several redemption options that weren’t available for redemption at the time.
A few more have become available since then, but there are still three options that are still “coming soon”: Blacklane rides, Bilt Neighborhood Parking credits, and BLADE helicopter flights.
With regards to the latter option, Bilt updated their terms and conditions late last week to provide more details as to how BLADE redemptions will work. Unfortunately, it’s not a welcome update as you could be forced to redeem more Bilt Cash than you actually need to.
The Bilt Cash terms and conditions now state the following (my bolding):
3.1.6 BLADE Airport Transfer Credit (New – 3/13)
Bilt Members may redeem Bilt Cash for credit toward BLADE bookings, subject to the terms and conditions set forth below. Members are eligible to redeem Bilt Cash for two (2) BLADE credits per calendar year. The redemption allowance resets on January 1 of each calendar year. The available amount per credit is $350. Each $350 credit must be applied in its entirety at redemption for one (1) BLADE seat. If the cost of the flight is less than $350, no remaining credit balance will be retained or refunded. Members may use credits one at a time, or use both annual credit redemptions for two (2) seats in the same booking. Bilt Cash redemptions can be used in combination with Bilt Points and cash at checkout for BLADE bookings in the Bilt app.
To utilize a BLADE credit, members must book an eligible BLADE flight on the Bilt app or website. Available Bilt Cash redemption options will automatically appear at checkout.
As you can see, redemptions for BLADE will cost a fixed $350 in Bilt Cash, regardless of the flight cost. Flights between Manhattan and New York JFK or Newark airports start at $195, so being forced to redeem $350 worth of Bilt Cash for a $195 flight means you’re wasting a lot of Bilt Cash versus the cash price (not that $350 of Bilt Cash can ever be redeemed for $350 of actual cash).
Similarly, flights between Nice airport and Monaco cost €195 (~$227) and flights between Westchester airport and Manhattan cost $225. That means those options won’t help you get full value either.
That means that if you want to get full value from the $350 redemption, you’re looking at flights between Manhattan and the Hamptons (~$1,000-$1,200), between Nice airport and Monaco during the Monaco Grand Prix race weekend (€450/~$525), or for a private flight, unless the often-cheaper flight options elsewhere are more expensive when you come to book them.
Unfortunately the value of the $350 can only be redeemed towards the cost of one BLADE seat. That means you can’t book two tickets from Manhattan to JFK airport for a total of $390 (i.e. $195 each) and reduce that cost by $350. Instead, you’d effectively get one seat free and have to pay $195 for the other person.
What’s not clear is if the $350 can also contribute towards an increased baggage allowance on a BLADE flight. In the US, you’re allowed both a carry-on and a personal item, but the combined weight limit of your bags can’t exceed 25 lbs without additional baggage fees. If you can apply the credit towards baggage fees in addition to your seat, that’ll make the redemptions a little more worthwhile.
The terms also state that BLADE bookings will be made in the Bilt app or on their website, rather than directly with BLADE.
The fact that Bilt has updated the terms and conditions to include these extra details hopefully means that BLADE redemptions will be coming sooner rather than later. Still no news on Blacklane redemptions though sadly.
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Great follow up. Rich Kerr can troll consumers on reddit and comment threads all he wants, but Bilt laid it out themselves. Kudos on silencing him with his own T&C
How many times has something been accidentally released by other card issuers? But, because it’s Bilt, the default answer of course is that they’re all screw-ups who are trying to screw us with the worst card ever released. This default attitude is tiring. But, keep dishing the chum, it generates clicks
I can’t remember the last time Amex, Chase, Citi, or Capital One added something notable to their terms and conditions that they didn’t mean to include in there, relying on us to let them know that it’s there.
I’m also struggling to remember the last time that Amex, Chase, Citi, or Capital One announced a brand new rewards concept, listed all the ways you’d be able to redeem those rewards but in an incredibly vague way because they simply hadn’t actually put in place the agreements with those partners, opened applications for cards that would earn that additional type of rewards while still not having those agreements in place, then a day or two later change their approach and introduce a completely different earning structure that (mostly) did away with that new rewards concept if you didn’t want it. Then, more than 6 months after first announcing those new redemption options, still not having three of them in place, including two of the flagship redemption options.
I don’t think Bilt is necessarily trying to screw over cardholders. I do think though that they overpromise and underdeliver, move fast and break things, and don’t have anywhere close to the professionalism that Amex, Chase, Citi, Capital One, etc. do. If any of those banks did similar things and updated their terms and conditions on the (nearly) weekly basis that Bilt does, we’d be sure to cover that too.
The original purpose of this post was to inform readers about an eagerly awaited Bilt Cash redemption option. It was something we identified had been added to the Bilt Cash terms and conditions, but Bilt hadn’t publicized yet.
The Amex website developers use non-public “Q” pages to test and stage card pages. There have been many times that Amex’ developers have accidentally configured these pages as public. Sometimes Q pages have features that are not yet finalized and are not ultimately adopted.
Something similar happened to the CSR about a month prior to its refresh.
I agree that Bilt would have been better off not publishing a benefit that was not live. I also agree with “pick a story and stick with it.” Although, if feedback suggests that terms and conditions are imprecise, updating is appropriate. And, if abuse exposes a vulnerability, updating is appropriate.
(If we’re being honest, Chase takes the cake for material changes to card benefits.)
In the end, to me, there seems to be a predisposition among bloggers (except DoC) toward negativity about Bilt.
Which is ironic considering we’ve had many commenters over the years complaining that we – and other bloggers – were shilling for Bilt and that Doctor of Credit was the only trustworthy one because they weren’t beholden to Bilt. I’m not in any way saying DoC’s coverage of Bilt is in any way skewed – it’s not; just that it’s funny that people are now complaining that we’re too harsh on Bilt after so many had complained we’d been too praiseworthy previously.
Ultimately, I don’t think any of us have a predisposition toward negativity about Bilt. It’s simply that Bilt has been doing so many things in the last year or two that deserve accountability in a way that other banks, for the most part, haven’t done.
That said, we’ve absolutely called out banks and loyalty programs when deserved, such as Chase’s botched revamp and rollout of the Sapphire Reserve card, Marriott’s myriad of issues, lazy and non-rewarding Hilton promotions, Virgin Atlantic overnight devaluations, poor Amex > JetBlue transfer bonuses, etc. The podcast has even had a section for years that originated as “What crazy thing did Citi do this week?” Each week Greg and Nick highlight negative things that banks and loyalty programs have done, so it’s not like we don’t provide coverage of those.
I think people are just asking for neutral/fair coverage. Don’t go super anti-BILT or super-pro BILT.
As an example, some could say all Hyatt news gets the kids gloves at FM but BILT is held to a higher standard and it could give the impression that the size of the referral bonus plays role in how FM covers these rewards programs.
Just my 2 cents.
Giving Hyatt the kids gloves treatment involves titling a post about the changes “Mayday” while also calling them “brutal”? https://frequentmiler.com/mayday-hyatt-to-launch-a-brutal-new-world-of-hyatt-chart-in-may-2026/
As for the size of the referral bonus, I can assure you that plays zero role in our coverage. Other than Greg, none of us have any clue as to how much the affiliate payouts are for the various cards. Even if we did know, we wouldn’t tailor our coverage accordingly.
Interesting take since we’ve never been paid a dime from Hyatt (we aren’t a Hyatt affiliate, whatever that might mean), but we have been a Bilt affiliate.
For some reason, despite the fact that our coverage of all programs and banks is 100% our opinion, a common default is “the reason why you’re saying something I disagree with must be because you’re being paid to say it, otherwise, you’d agree with me.”
All of our opinions are ours. All the time. They may not be “neutral;” they’re opinions after all. They may not be correct. But they’re ours.
It’s refreshing to have folks who disagree with our opinions tell us why they think that what we’re saying is wrong, as opposed to falling back to, “you’re just saying that because you’re paid/not paid to say that.”
Excellent reporting and follow up. Really great stuff.
Look – they were making it up as they went along at launch, and – shocker – they are still making it up as they go along.
I think it’s perfectly rational for folks to go and grab the SUB if they want, but there’s a reason to continue to advise caution when it comes to Bilt. The points they offer are real. But are these the folks that you want to trust with your mortgage payment?
What a bait and switch. Don’t advertise a perk you don’t actually plan to offer. Bilt is opening itself up to a lawsuit.
I might give Bilt a chance one day, but in its current form, this continuous ****show of a rollout, even months into Bilt 2.0, means that I won’t go near Bilt with a 10 ft pole. With so many other great welcome offers and spend bonuses out there, 50K Bilt points or some Bilt funny money (which Bilt is constantly changing the narrative on how you can actually use) does not not move the needle for me.
It’s a shame. If the program functioned as designed and promised, it would be pretty compelling. However, at this point, I simply do not trust Bilt,. The broken trust of me and a lot of other people is going to be a big hurdle from them to get over moving forward and they are probably going to have to dangle a pretty big carrot beyond their mediocre current welcome offers to get us to look at this program again.
Mr. Kerr, please slow your roll(out) and get your program fully baked before bringing it to market. Right now, you are treating your customers, many of whom are shelling out a pretty penny in annual fees for your premium card, like beta testers. At best, you are building a lot of bad faith in a community whose word of mouth (telling their non-points-savvy friends and relatives about your program) is what is going to make or break the credit card component of your business model. At worst, you are going to get sued for bait and switch marketing. Make sure to keep up with your lawyer retainers.
However, if you and your team want to keep playing games, best of luck to you and the survival of your credit card business. Keep up your current course and I won’t be surprised to see Bilt have to pivot to a rental platform payment processor only.
Are we being a touch dramatic?
Nope. Think this is a pretty fair assessment.
Just want to throw this out there. My wife and I once had a trip planned to Nice France and wanted to visit Monaco and wanted to do a blade ride from nice to Monaco and back and at that point the niece Monaco option wasn’t even out yet available on Bilt. So I reached out and Richard Kerr himself helped me get the booking made. I only mention this because Mr Kerr didn’t have to do this at all. He went out of his way to help some random customer with some random trip out in France. In my mind, that says a lot about his character and I think he gets way too much hate for some of the issues that they’ve had. Admittedly, there’s been a lot of things that haven’t quite gone to plan but I will have to say they’re trying to build out this very sophisticated program that’s designed specifically to help points and miles people. There are a lot of Banks that could care less about us and they are trying to cater to us in many ways. Nit perfect but better than most.
He helped you use bilt cash? How did you contact him? I have a trip planned too.
No, a free Blade flight comes with Platinum Status with Bilt this is before Bilt cash even existed. I had a contact with Geobreeze travel and they reached out to him on my behalf.
Amateur hour.
Another example of why not to deal with Bilt. It’s been months of 2.0 and the very people in charge of it still can’t even describe it accurately.
This is not accurate or true; no announcement has yet been made. – Kerr, Bilt
Would you mind advising what’s incorrect? The wording comes directly from the Bilt Cash Terms & Conditions on the Bilt website https://www.bilt.com/terms/bilt-cash
Stephen, you are quoting from Bilt. You should stick to reputable sources.
Stephen, just because it’s in Bilt’s terms doesn’t mean it’s accurate.
Stephen, we have told you to use a reputable source. (Jk)
RATIOed kerr
but your podcast ep was informative
The Bilt Concierge told me not to listen to Richard Kerr:
BILT hasn’t “bilt” a reputation, yet.
I am particularly interested in using Bilt cash on Blacklane for an upcoming family trip, where pre-arranged transport with a carseat would be a big convenience. I DM’d Richard Kerr at Bilt to ask when Blacklane redemptions would be available. To his credit, he responded. But he just said “coming soon” lol.
I’d love black lane to become available. My fear is black lane was acquired by Uber so the Bilt partnership with Lyft makes me think this is never coming.
Well that’s assuming they even make it a redemption method. It’s been almost 4 months and it still says coming soon
Well now I’m not so upset that I couldn’t use this benefit in April when we used my free Blade ride from Bilt Platinum and had to pay around $200 all in for my wife. Disappointing.
Sorry but
Flights between Manhattan and New York JFK or Newark airports start at $195….
+
That means that if you want to get full value from the $350 redemption, you’re looking at flights between Manhattan and the Hamptons….
Are non sensical when combined. Yes, they start at, but they increase when the helicopter sells seats/departure day is getting closer (random dates the next couple of month start at $270) AND there is Basic, Flex and Max.
$195 + $175 Max (otherwise you pay for more than 25 lbs of carry-on and when traveling for more than a weekend that is quickly reached)
As he said in the article, it is still unclear if Bilt will let you use the $350 allowance towards those extra fees. They may say that you can only buy a basic fare with the credit.
I’m not sure why those two sentences are nonsensical when combined. A BLADE redemption will cost $350 Bilt Cash. Flights between Manhattan and New York JFK or Newark start at $195 which means you could be letting $155 of that Bilt Cash go to waste. Flights between Manhattan and the Hamptons cost $1,000+, so you’ll always get the full value from the $350 redemption.
And as Actualmichael has pointed out, as I mentioned in the post we don’t know if Bilt will let you use the $350 credit towards baggage too, or only the seat itself. Given the myriad ways that Bilt has placed restrictions on how you can redeem Bilt Cash, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it’s the latter, but I do genuinely hope it’s the former as that’ll make it a much more worthwhile redemption.
Because of this part:
if you want to get full value from the $350 redemption, you’re looking at flights between Manhattan and the Hamptons
That is not true as you can pay more than $195 (aka starting at) between Manhattan and JFK/EWR … random dates started at $270 Basic and obviously Flex/Max are more expensive.
Ah, I see what you mean. I’ve just added a little extra to that sentence to clarify that.
Some of us use the Bilt card because it’s a fit and will tend to have a superabundance of Bilt Cash. Which will be left on the table at the end of the year. For us, the Blade credit simply affords a free ride and I don’t think we’ll particularly care that we didn’t squeeze every last dollar out of the credit.
But, for everyone else, keep telling yourself that Bilt was devised by Satan and is the worst card ever issued.
This is me exactly! I love my Bilt card and due to spend, generate more Bilt cash than I can use. Given that I travel to Manhattan several times per year, I’ll be happy to dump excess Bilt cash on free helicopter rides rather than see it disappear at year end. At the end of the day, Bilt cash is funny money that we can use or lose.
Exactly this. People forget Bilt cash is essentially Monopoly money not real cash. I view it more as choose your own credit card coupon book. My issue is that we’re 4 months deep and it’s still not an option. Same with black lane.