Game changing transfer bonuses: The Bilt card ain’t just for renters anymore

Some thoughts, sort of in reverse order:

1) [Your statement: Bilt hired Richard Kerr to influence the influencers, etc. . .] First, I don’t necessarily know why Bilt hired Richard Kerr as I’ve never asked anybody there, but my assumption has been that they hired him as someone who was an expert in the space, so he could provide valuable insight into the things that would excite rewards enthusiasts (both in terms of which transfer partner relationships to pursue and what features (no doubt like the Rent Day transfer bonuses) would get people talking) and I assume also because they wanted someone on staff who would anticipate what types of behavior would likely occur they may consider to be abuses if they did “this” or “that” (I’m frequently surprised that nobody at most major issuers seems to consult anyone in the rewards enthusiast space about either what features would be exciting / duds or what loopholes they aren’t anticipating; Bilt seems to have had some foresight there).

As to whether they thought he would buy influence with bloggers, I can’t say. I had only met Richard Kerr once at an FTU conference years ago and I spoke to him for six or seven minutes about what he was doing for health insurance at the time. I otherwise didn’t know the guy — that’s literally the only time I had met him or interacted with him before he worked at Bilt. I don’t know how well others knew / know him. I’ve obviously interacted with him more now that he works at Bilt. I don’t know that he’s “hyped” anything to me. He shares the press releases when they come through and I’ll say that he’s very good at answering questions. Surprisingly, not every person who works in communications responds in a timely manner with clear answers, but he does do a very good job at that and I appreciate that. I also long appreciated the fact that someone who used to work as Hyatt’s PR person was amazing in that regard — she always replied quickly and when she didn’t know the answer, she found out and made sure it was the right answer. You wouldn’t know her name because she was never a blogger, but my point in mentioning that is to say that Bilt isn’t the only company that has someone who is good at answering questions — and while I guess that may buy influence in the sense that I like getting clear and accurate answers to my questions, it’s not like our coverage of Hyatt was “overhyped” by getting my questions answered. I don’t feel it is at Bilt either. We’re legit excited about the program. That has nothing to do with Richard Kerr. Again, I’ve had good interactions with him, but I don’t know him on a personal level.

Again, I think Bilt’s influence has been because they are doing something interesting. Sure, there is affiliate commission from their card, but just do the math as to how many cards there are with issuer X, Y, or Z and ask yourself whether you think we would be writing about Bilt at all if affiliate commissions dictated our content. I think Greg once said that it would be akin to tipping the front desk person 1c and thinking that you got the upgrade because of your tip. But if there is one thing I’ll give Bilt massive credit for that I think does gain them influence it is in being candid behind the scenes. They’ve been open in a way that just isn’t common in this space. We’ve had access to their executives and in some cases gotten insight into decisions they’ve made and the opportunity to share feedback about what could make them better. Again, I’m surprised that other rewards programs don’t make similar efforts to connect, though that’s largely because those other programs are so large.

Should we not write about what we’re excited about? That’s what we’ve always done. Back when the Alliant card offered 3% cash back for the first year and 2.5% back in subsequent years, I sung its praises regularly despite the fact that there were no affiliate commissions for that card. We’ve covered the Wyndham Business Earner extensively (and I’ve extensively covered how to leverage it to get free cruises, etc). I don’t know that I’d call it the MVP of the travel hacking space because not everybody likes cruises, not everybody can get to Atlantic City for that portion, and not everybody cares about the relationship with Vacasa (which I love but has a very limited footprint), and certainly not everyone wants to stay at Wyndham properties. See any of the numerous posts I’ve written about why the card is great or any of our “What’s in our wallet” posts to know that I do love the card and we all carry it in our everyday wallets, but calling it the MVP of the space seems a bit of a stretch. And Barclays can be a lot harder to get approved with for a business card than some other issuers, so it’s probably not a fit for everyone’s audience. I’m not saying you’re wrong — it’s probably true that some sites don’t write much about it because it doesn’t earn them any income. But I can’t imagine that Bilt is making enough of a financial impact to be out hitting the heavy hitters anywhere. Again, Greg has been candid in comments on his state of the business post about the minuscule affect it’s had on this site’s finances. If we were primarily excited by money, I can’t imagine you’d have ever heard of the Bilt card from this site. They’ve just made a good product. I should note that there are plenty of cards that pay affiliate commissions that you’ve probably never heard us mention. You remember the last time we mentioned the Quicksilver card? Yeah, I don’t either — because it’s not an exciting card. Bilt is. And I should add here that the point of this particular podcast was to note how our opinion about the card had changed. It’s not that the Bilt people didn’t always try to convince us that everyone should have the Bilt card. Of course they did. And neither Greg nor I had it in our households for a long time. Instead, we said it was almost a no-brainer for people who rent, but probably not a fit for anyone else. I specifically had that conversation with the CEO of Bilt back in the beginning about why I didn’t have the card and I only thought it made sense for renters: I said that it didn’t make sense for me to have it because I had other cards out-earning it and I didn’t pay rent. He tried to convince me that everyone should have it and that it was a better value than my Amex Gold card. He didn’t convince me – I kept the Gold card in my wallet and didn’t have a Bilt card in my household for a couple of years after that conversation. But the big transfer bonuses and the slate of partners they have added did make me feel differently about the card (and that’s why we added it).

2) Your statement: Bilt isn’t comparable to a 2% back card. Ok, fair enough. I’m comparing it to the Citi Double Cash because the Double Cash has no annual fee and has points that can be transferred to partners if you have a Premier. As Brent pointed out here, what do you want to compare it to? A Freedom Unlimited that offers 1.5x everywhere, 3x dining and pharmacy, can only transfer to partners if you have a $95 card also, and hasn’t ever (I think?) offered an airline transfer bonus of more than 25%….and doesn’t have any interesting partners that Bilt doesn’t (and lacks many that Bilt has)? Sure, the 3x everywhere year was a great offer for big spenders (and I also recommended it to a family member for whom I thought it was a great fit during that offer). That said, if I had put my $11,000 tax payment on that card with that offer, I’d have 33,000 UR points, which I’d probably transfer to Hyatt. Instead, I did it with Bilt and I got 55,000 points that I could have transferred to Hyatt (but ended up transferring to Aeroplan for 110,000 miles instead). And even if I didn’t get the 5x for 5 days, I’d have made that payment on the 1st of the month for 22,000 points and waited for the next good transfer bonus and ended up with at least 38,500 airline miles. No, it’s not guaranteed, but neither is it guaranteed that I’ll get great value with Hyatt — I’m just confident enough in both situations not to really be worried about the alternative. Feel free to place your confidences elsewhere.

The BBP offers 0.6cpp for statement credits. If you also have an Amex Business Checking account, you can get 0.8c per point for a statement credit. It’s only if you also have a $695 Business Platinum card that you can get 1c per point — so the BBP isn’t a 2% cash back card, either. And I’d argue that the only way to get outsized value from Amex points is to transfer them to foreign airline programs. Delta and JetBlue are poor redemptions since the points value is more or less capped and you’ll pay a fee to transfer to them. Hilton can offer lukewarm value when there’s a good transfer bonus — but then you don’t like counting on those, so we can’t count that because we don’t know that Amex will offer them. So how are you getting solid return without any thought at all? Don’t tell me with the 35% pay with points rebate as that once again requires a $695 fee, so it’s not comparable. Again, foreign transfer partner programs are where it’s at with Amex. Bilt has all of the best of Amex’s partners except for ANA and also has Chase’s best partner, Citi’s best partner, and all the best Capital One partners, and AA which nobody has. Don’t get me wrong: I love Amex Membership Rewards points. I’ve collected millions of them each year for the past several years (and used millions of them in that time also). I’m not saying that the BBP is a bad card or that the currency itself is bad, just that it has the same caveats regarding use of the points. Your counter-argument is that 2x everywhere all the time is better (though only on $50K per year, then 1x). I’d counter your counter with the fact that once you’ve spent $10K on the Bilt card, you’re getting a 100% transfer bonus during these bonuses (which, as you say, could never happen again — though don’t you agree that would be a really strange play if they want to expand to mortgage? Do you not think they’ve thought a few steps ahead all along?). Anyway, if you’re happy with the transfer partners most likely to offer the big bonuses (Air France, Virgin Atlantic, Hawaiian, Aeroplan, and I’d predict Avianca LifeMiles and Avios – no inside info there, just educated guess), then your return becomes similar to a Blue Business Plus without the $50K annual limit and with the ability to transfer to more programs.

3) You have to jump through hoops to earn rewards. Yeah, the 5 transactions per month thing is kinda annoying — but, again, I haven’t heard much pushback on Amex for years and years requiring 30 transactions per month to get the 50% bonus on the EDP. While I agree that the 5 transaction thing is kinda annoying, I also think it’s not unreasonably onerous and I accept that there need to be breakage points in any program in order for the maximizers to get great value. If that’s one of the things that makes it possible for folks like you and I to get good value out of the program, so be it. I could easily schedule five payments to my car insurance on the first of every month (or a payment to my car insurance and one to health insurance and one a couple of other bills) — many billers make it easy to set up recurring payments, so that’s not really a hurdle I think I’ll struggle to make it over. Same thing for focusing spend for Rent Day — it’s literally a few clicks of the mouse to schedule out recurring payments for things I have to pay monthly to happen on the first of the month. That’s not a major mental bandwidth drain for me — it’s a set it one time and forget it type thing.

I found it interesting that one of the caveats you mentioned is the need to redeem strategically. I’d argue that’s an absolutely base level skill required to succeed in this game no matter what your preferred credit card(s) or program(s) may be. That’s not unique to Bilt and I’m surprised that you’d suggest that a currency that can transfer to AA, Hyatt, and United requires more strategy from a novice user than one that can’t transfer to any of them (Citi? Capital One?). If you’re not redeeming strategically, then just get yourself a 2% cash back card (or one of the Bank of America cards for 2.625% back if you can qualify for Platinum Honors) and call it a day. All points and miles programs require strategic redemptions. Bilt provides the hands-down best mix of transfer partners in the business for being equipped to make great strategic redemptions, don’t they? Unless your preferred redemption is cash — they stink for that, no doubt. If you want to use credit card rewards to pay your rent or redeem for cash back, the Bilt card is not for you, full stop. No argument.

As far as hoping for the initial 5x for 5 days bonus and transfer bonuses, you’re right. Legit question: How many people do you know who have gotten the card and haven’t been targeted for the 5x for 5 days? As I’ve said before, I know they must exist. I’m curious how many you know. I applied because for me, that number was zero (and yes, I do know numerous people who have the card).

4) Your comment: Hope you aren’t overspending. Your point here I think is the risk of shut down. It’s true that I’ve gotten the sense that Bilt will shut down heavy MSers (and as I said at the beginning, I always assumed that was why they hired someone from the points and miles space – in order to anticipate that and cut it off), so I’ll agree that if your primary ideas for using the card are traditional MS methods, you’re taking a risk with Bilt. But then, I know people who have been shut down by each of the major issuers, so that risk is never nonexistent. But personally, I intend to use the Bilt card as intended, though obviously maximizing the big earn opportunities for legitimate stuff. I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder at these points, so I don’t intend to do anything that’s going to put me at risk. For the record, I take the same approach with the Altitude Reserve for the same reason — I know they were a little shut-down happy in the beginning and I value the 3x mobile wallet enough that I don’t want to risk losing it, so I’m not doing any shenanigans there.

5) Hope the VC funding doesn’t run out. I’m not terribly emotional about this. I get the sense that they aren’t relying on the VC money to pay their bills but rather are using it to expand the program — but I obviously don’t know that for sure. More importantly, I don’t think it’s likely that we’ll see a sudden shutting off of the lights and disappearance even if your fear here comes to fruition. The only similar precedent I can think of is Brex. Brex had a much more limited set of transfer partners, but they also went wild with an unsustainable welcome bonus (and were giving that 100K / $1,000 bonus to some people multiple times with multiple businesses, etc). I’d argue that they didn’t do their homework in terms of knowing what the outcome of that was going to look like, but even in that scenario where they exited the small business market, everyone got the chance to transfer out / redeem all of their points — balances didn’t just get zeroed without warning. I guess that crazy end-of-the-world scenario could happen here. And if it does, someone who was a naysayer the whole time will tell me “I told you so!”. I think that between now and then I’ll probably have redeemed a lot of points to very good value already, but maybe I’ll get caught out there and regret having gotten the card. I just don’t see that scenario as being more likely than the one where I get great value for a long time. I have gotten the impression that Bilt has always been playing the long game. Obviously every startup also thinks they are playing the long game….but not many of them get as far as Bilt has in terms of the doors they’ve opened and things they’ve made happen. It’s easy to point to venture capital as the “obvious” way that they’ve made the good things happen, but let’s use the Point Debit Card as a comparison point: they pulled in a bunch of venture capital and offered huge earning in a lot of places and the promise that they’d eventually launch transfer partners — but despite the venture capital, they never convinced any transfer partners to come on board. I imagine — maybe incorrectly, but it’s my educated guess — that for major partners like American, Hyatt, and United to come on board, they probably needed more convincing as to the roadmap and sustainability than an amount of venture capital money. Those companies aren’t playing ball for venture capital dollars. Again, this is all conjecture on my part, and maybe it’s all a house of cards waiting on a strong wind to collapse….but the logical thinker in me will be pretty darn surprised if that happens. Again, not impossible — my wife will be the first to tell you that I’m not always right. But whether I’m right or wrong, I just don’t share this fear.

6) Bilt is over-hyped. Is it? If Citi offered a 75-150% transfer bonus to Asia Miles one month, EVA the next, and Turkish a few months later, would you expect us not to cover it for fear of “over-hyping” it? It would be a disservice to our readership not to talk about such unprecedented opportunities. Out of 240 podcast episodes, I think we’ve done 2 with main events about Bilt (feel free to correct me if I’m wrong – I haven’t checked as I’m in Guadeloupe at the moment and my Internet is slow). In the last 6 months, I count 13 posts with Bilt in the title. Four of those were about the 75-150% Rent Day transfer bonuses (should we not cover those??), two of which were about new transfer partners added (should we not cover those??), one of which was Greg’s first impressions after getting the card (is that not useful content?), one of which was to say that there was no more public welcome bonus (shouldn’t we tell readers about that?), one of which was about how it couldn’t be gamed with Curve anymore……what are we “overhyping”? Should we not be excited about a 75%-150% transfer bonus when it happens? Should we pretend not to be excited about it? If not that, what should we get excited about that we don’t? Again, I just legitimately don’t understand this point of criticism. Someone else said it’s just the overall amount of exposure — sort of the Taylor Swift effect where it doesn’t even matter if it’s something good, too much of it turns people off. I guess — but then I ask again, should we not tell people when they can get an amazing transfer value and how to maximize it?

By the way, none of those posts have claimed that everyone should have the Bilt card on their wallet. None of them have called it the “MVP” or king of this space. Sure, we’ve been excited about the program when they’ve done good things…but I wouldn’t pretend not to be excited just because some people won’t like that I’m excited. Perhaps you could say that we don’t give them enough flak about not having a public welcome bonus. I mean, believe me, we’ve mentioned that to them plenty of times — but at this point it’s clear that they don’t intend to do that…and while I would have said in the beginning that they were nuts and wouldn’t be competitive without one, the bottom line is that they got us to open one without offering a publicly-advertised welcome bonus, so I guess they weren’t wrong that they didn’t need to. As you mentioned, I think it’s been innovative that they’ve decided to forgo that expense in favor of doing other things that make the program more competitive. Would I like to see an easy public welcome bonus? Of course I would. But I think they are more focused on making a card that they’ll get people to want to spend on. They aren’t alone in that desire — the minimum spend creep that we’ve seen from other issuers has clearly been designed to get people to use their card more. I think every rewards program wants that. Bilt is obviously trying to accomplish that in a different way than other issuers have. And, again, if not offering a welcome bonus makes it possible for them to offer these nutso transfer bonuses to those of us willing to work the system, then so be it.

Finally, and this is a point you may find relevant, I think that the nature of the “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get” nature of the Rent Day promotions turns some people off. Fair enough. I said in a comment on FB earlier that I think that for someone who says, “I want to go to Bangkok the first week of December and I don’t care what the points cost is, I just want my trip not to cost me any dollars,” the Bilt program probably isn’t the right fit. If you’re the type of person who says, “Oh, Bilt has a 75-150% transfer bonus to Avianca LifeMiles, which means that I can travel to Europe in business class for as low as 25,200 Bilt points….and look! There’s a bunch of Star Alliance award availability to Albania in September and I have a free week in September and Carrie from Frequent Miler wrote a post about how much she loved Albania. I can go to Bangkok next year, but the chance to get to Albania in business class for 25.2K points is a rare opportunity, so let’s go figure out what Albania has to offer!”, then I think the Bilt program can be exciting. And I think that a lot of people who get into blogging about this stuff love those spontaneous trips to Albania and aren’t going to try to fit a square peg in a round hole (the Bangkok example) but are rather going to take their square peg and look at it as an adventure to find the perfect square for that. So I think that’s why at least some rewards travel enthusiasts get excited about it. And it’s a fair criticism that the card isn’t necessarily a slam dunk for someone who wants a specific trip at a specific time unless they are only looking at it as a supplemental points generator to add to the program that gets them that trip. But, again, I don’t think that the card doesn’t deserve the attention it’s received just because it isn’t a fit for some people.

I’m not trying to convince you that you should have the Bilt card or care about Bilt Rewards. It’s fine if you don’t. But you responded with detail, so I thought you deserved a full answer. I’ve said it a few times, but I’ll say it again: maybe I’m dead wrong about Bilt. I can accept that in the same way that when AA had the crazy SimplyMiles deal I was willing to gamble $6K on the 240x paying out. It did and I felt like a winner, but if it hadn’t I could accept that and move on to the next deal. Despite what you may think based on the length of my responses here, I don’t get terribly emotionally attached to any particular deal. I don’t expect any of them to last forever — I just try to maximize the opportunities I see for low-hanging fruit. Bilt fits in that strategy for me. Someday, it may not (and I guess it probably won’t?). But I think that day probably isn’t soon. We’ll see.