In today’s episode, we’ll talk about Qatar’s crazy new rules if you want to redeem rewards for friends & family, how Wyndham is going to devalue (but it might not be so bad), and we’ll take a look back at the first 6 months of Bilt 2.0: The good, the bad, and where things stand now.
Bilt Palladium Review: 6-month checkpoint
Watch here:
Or listen here (or click “Follow” on the player below to select your preferred podcast app instead):
Giant Mailbag
(01:13) – Gary Leff has a couple of minor interesting notes on our recent ‘question of the week’ podcast episode
Find our recent Question of the Week episode here
Crazy Thing: Qatar Airways Privilege Club
(07:51) – Want to use Qatar Avios to book flights for friends or family? Good luck!
Read more about this Qatar Avios restriction here
Bonvoyed by Wyndham
(15:36) – Learn more about Wyndham Rewards new award pricing here
Awards, Points, and More
(19:43) – Learn about Bilt adding I Prefer 1:2 here
(23:24) – Learn more about the Hyatt / Under Canvas Promo: 15% points rebate on award stays here
(28:59) – Necker Island has new award pricing: 250K per night for 2 adults
(35:08) – Random tips from Nick
Main Event: Bilt Palladium Review: 6 month checkpoint
(41:16) – Background: Bilt changed card issuers and moved from 1 card to 3
(51:39) – Palladium card details
(54:10) – Bilt Elite Status details
(55:41) – Bilt Cash details
(1:01:48) – Nick’s Review
(1:10:49) – Greg’s Review
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Music Credit – “Ocean Deep” by Annie Yoder
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Maybe I missed it, but I heard a lot of excitement about the Bilt program and the earning potential of the palladium card, but no discussion of the annual fee being weighed against this point earning potential. In fact it sounds like neither of you are using the hotel credits and don’t find them to be worth much, so you are paying $495 a year to participate in the program. Do you find the value of the point earning potential of the Bilt Palladium that good to be worth the annual fee? You guys are pros and leave no stone unturned so understand if you out of new sign up bonus opportunities, but for the typical frequent miler reader who still has sign up bonuses available, is the annual fee and directing so much spend to maximize the card worth it?
P.S. Love you Nick, but you really simplified the debate about bilt 2.0, again by not bringing up the other part of the equation – the annual fee. 2x vs. 2x+ Bilt cash (therefore Bilt is immediately better even if Bilt cash is worth pennies) is an apple to oranges comparison when 2X cards are $0 annual fee and 2x + Bilt cash is $495.
Great review! Since you mentioned the authorized user setup can route rewards to a separate Bilt account, I have a few specific questions on how the finer details work:
Credit Reporting: Do you know if Cardless reports the Bilt Palladium authorized user card to the AU’s personal credit file? Or does it just function as an extension of the primary account?
AU Bilt Cash Perks (Lyft/Grubhub): Does the authorized user get their own separate monthly allowance for the smaller Bilt Cash perks like the $10 Lyft or Grubhub credits, provided they have a cash balance to use?
The $200 Hotel Credit: Does the authorized user also get their own $200 annual Bilt travel hotel credit on their side, or is that strictly a single benefit tied to the primary account holder’s annual fee?
The $50 Milestone Bilt Cash: For the $50 Bilt Cash bonus given for every 25,000 points earned—if the AU is routing rewards to their own account, do they independently trigger that $50 bonus as they hit milestones?
Burning Expiring Bilt Cash via Split Charges: Since Bilt Cash largely expires at the end of the year, have you guys tested any creative ways to burn it all down using player 1 and player 2 accounts? For instance, with Bilt Mobile Checkout, have you tried splitting a dinner check between two people so both of you can redeem your individual monthly credits on the exact same charge?
I would like to know these as well! @Nick Reyes
Thanks for the tag here to make sure I saw it. Answers:
Q: Do you know if Cardless reports the Bilt Palladium authorized user card to the AU’s personal credit file?
A: Yes, they report — and pretty quickly. It wasn’t like 1 or 2 days, but it wasn’t more than a week or two. I can’t recall exactly.
Q: Does the authorized user get their own separate monthly allowance for the smaller Bilt Cash perks like the $10 Lyft or Grubhub credits, provided they have a cash balance to use?
A: Yes, I see those redemptions in my account. I believe that those Bilt Cash redemption options exist for all Bilt users; they aren’t limited to credit card holders. Keep in mind that even a non-CC holder gets $50 in Bilt Cash for every 25K points earned, and there are other ways of potentially earning Bilt Cash (a landlord could offer it for re-signing a lease, other Neighborhood Rewards merchants probably have access to offer Bilt Cash as part of an incentive, etc). So I *think* those options exist for all users — I don’t think those redemptions are a credit card benefit.
Q: Does the authorized user also get their own $200 annual Bilt travel hotel credit on their side, or is that strictly a single benefit tied to the primary account holder’s annual fee?
A: No. I can’t immediately think of any credit card on the market where the AU gets a separate set of coupon benefits from the card like that.
Q: For the $50 Bilt Cash bonus given for every 25,000 points earned—if the AU is routing rewards to their own account, do they independently trigger that $50 bonus as they hit milestones?
A: Yes. The points I earn as an AU are counting toward my tracker for that.
Q: Since Bilt Cash largely expires at the end of the year, have you guys tested any creative ways to burn it all down using player 1 and player 2 accounts? For instance, with Bilt Mobile Checkout, have you tried splitting a dinner check between two people so both of you can redeem your individual monthly credits on the exact same charge?
A: I haven’t personally tried that, but I intend to very soon. A friend told me that this does work (to be clear, I think you meant splitting the bill so like let’s imagine a $100 bill and my wife covers $50 with her Bilt Cash and I cover $25 with my Bilt Cash (since I don’t yet have elite status). I expect that is going to work (we’d obviously be out of pocket for the remainder).
Really appreciate the reply!
The other night i split a restaurant bill three ways and used bilt cash from three different palladium cards (p1, p2, p3). The waitress gave us a business card style QR code which was connected to our table’s invoice. I had one account logged in via the app, one logged in via safari and one via chrome. The bill was split evenly three ways and the whole process was more or less seamless. The only hiccup was figuring out how to get the QR code to open up the app versus a browser. Not entirely sure what caused it to work but after a couple of tries it worked.
ok I see AA is a bilt transfer partner. That increases the value of Bilt points for us.
AA is not a transfer partner- has not been for a while (unless you backdoor via AS).
I guess I read an old blog post that hasn’t been updated. Thanks for the reply.
Another point:
We’ve been doing a lot of crediting to our BofA Alaska Airlines Summit cards, especially foreign spending where it’s all 3x already. On top of that you earn 3:1 status points with Alaska which adds up. We both have mid tier status with Alaska and One World without setting a foot on an alaska flight other than a few Hawaiian inter island flights.
Are the potential 3x Bilt points better than that? I guess it depends on your perspective. We use our Alaska miles though AA miles would be better because their award chart is better but they are harder to accumulate for us despite being transferrable from Thank You points.
Another question: You mention crediting Rakuten to Bilt at 1:1. I’m already crediting Rakuten to Amex MR at 1:1. Is there an advantage to crediting them to Bilt?
to Greg and Nick: Do you think the Bilt 2.0 model is sustainable?
Great question. I could write a long post trying to answer that. The short answer is that Bilt has proactively tweaked its program in the past to shore up areas where they were losing too much money (such as when they started capping Rent Day at 1,000 bonus points). So, I think the same will happen here. Rather than Bilt 2.0 collapsing, I think it is more likely to evolve. If transfer bonuses become too expensive for them, for example, maybe they’ll start limiting them to 50,000 points instead of 100,000.
Wow! Now you love this card and you never credited commenter here L3 for correcting your low first year valuation of it ($600).
Give credit where it is due, or undermine your own credibility.
Because those are two separate things. The first year valuation is completely separate from what’s discussed here, and L3’s valuation was always insanely high (to say nothing of his wildly hostile attitude).
The first-year valuation is intended to provide a conservative estimate of the welcome bonus minus the annual fee and minus the cost to meet the minimum spend. It doesn’t say anything about how much we like the card or how much value we get from using it for spend.
Greg, I use my mom’s independent living facility as my home in the Bilt app and so far haven’t had any issues. Up until now, we’ve just been having Bilt mail checks to the office, but her management team just rolled out a (non-Bilt) tenant portal. I helped mom get her credentials set up, and we entered the routing and account numbers from the Bilt app. First rent is scheduled to be paid on July 1. I can let you know how it goes.
One thing to know is that the bank account that you pay rent out of does NOT need to be the same account that the Palladium credit card balance is paid from. So you could theoretically just set up your mom’s checking account as the rent payment account, leaving you largely out of the picture, except for being able to burn through your excess Bilt cash and collect even more points.
The one wrinkle might be the fact that her rent payment portal is a Bilt one, but if they let you enter any routing and account number, then I don’t see it being a problem.
I can’t seem to figure out how to use the $25 month credit at restaurants. Any helpful tips?
It’s a work in progress. It’s like InKind and they’re building out restaurants in their mobile checkout network. None in my area right now. But, when there are, that’s another $300 in Bilt Cash to use. It’ll be gravy.
@57:44 Just want to clarify that the extra 1x points earned from point accelerator don’t earn the $50 Bilt cash for every 25,000 Bilt points earned. The example in the podcast, spending $25,000 on Bilt Palladium with 1x point accelerator enabled for five times, the total earned points is 75,000 Bilt points, but only 50,000 of those points from 2x will earn the extra Bilt cash, in this case just $100 Bilt cash instead of the mentioned $150.
Just wanted to add another data point around mortgage payments. I have made 5 mortgage payments through Bilt with minimal issues.
As far as the concern for missing a mortgage payment, I still have my auto pay set up through my bank (small local credit union). But if the bank receives a check before the auto payment draft, then the autopay doesn’t trigger
The only change I’ve made is that I have the Bilt check payment go a full week before the deadline. I had one payment that was received the same day as the bank’s auto pay so I double paid that month and didn’t have to pay the month after.
I just bought a house, and this was my first month with my mortgage payment being due, after living in a Bilt Alliance property. I set up everything through Bilt, and decided to have the payment go through a full week in advance, in case something went wrong. No issues, and the points credited the next day.
Be careful booking NDC fares, even if they’re booked directly with the airline. These are the most restrictive fares. NDC is often referred as “No Damn Changes”
Awesome podcast. I hope you do a 1 year review as well!
Each month, Bilt Cash offers an opt-in credit to cover the cost of guest #3 and #4. If there is no value in this, then is there value to any card having Priority Pass with unlimited guests?
Probably not unless you have a really big family or travel with large groups. A lot of people are going to have P1 and P2 with two free guests each which is enough for a party of 6.
Exactly. I’ve seen some obsess over having PP with unlimited guests and wondered how often it was ever needed.
Did we say there’s no value to it? I don’t think we discussed that particular use of Bilt Cash at all.