BILT: So Long, Farewell . . . it Was Nice While it Lasted

I have quite a few credit cards, but not nearly as many as many people I know. I am a moderate points and miles freak – I try to take advantage of opportunities to save a little money and especially to earn extra points and miles for travel. I’ve learned in this arena to be grateful and not to take a benefit for granted. Good opportunities work for however long they work.

Bilt, a no annual fee credit card issued by Wells Fargo, came along and it’s promise, as many of you know so well, was that you could earn points for payment of rent without being charged a fee. (Actually there was a prior iteration of the Bilt card before Wells Fargo, but I won’t go into that here).

I joined for the simplicity and originality of the card. Sure, others escalated the amounts of their so called monthly rent, but I kept my payments rather modest – I paid monthly the roughly two thousand dollars my cooperative building charges for maintenance. So, I earned some points, and more importantly, did not pay interest for this perk.

The only requirement was to have 5 monthly charges on the card. While some moved their entire monthly spend to the card, many others, myself included, did five minimal charges to satisfy this requirement. These people became known as banana people, because they could satisfy this monthly requirement by buying five bananas. I don’t particularly love bananas, but I fell into that category, putting small charges on my credit card for subway fares, or buying cream of mushroom soup from Amazon one can at a time.

It was all easy and convenient, and I liked watching the quirky Bilt card expand it’s breadth, offering monthly transfer bonuses on Rent Day, giving points for trivia contests and partnering with local businesses such as Soulcycle. It was all kind of cool.

Recently, Bilt decided this model was no longer working. (Actually, I’m sure it was Wells Fargo that decided Bilt wasn’t working for it rather than the other way around).

Bilt then shopped around and found another card provider willing to work with it: Cardless. But the new credit card, or I should say credit cards, they came up with looked nothing like the prior Bilt card. (In fact, the Bilt team now started ridiculing the banana people they had created).

Photo by Junseong Lee on Unsplash

The new cards, three of them, now referred to as Bilt 2.0 look nothing like the prior version, Bilt 1.0. The features are now extremely complicated and convoluted, and in reality, they have nothing to do with fee-free rent payments.

There lies the problem. Marketing the new Bilt cards as a successor to prior Bilt card is like trying to put a square peg in a round hole. No matter how hard they try, it just doesn’t work. It is apples and oranges. In my opinion, they should have given Bilt 1.0 a proper burial and introduced these new cards with a new name, independent from Bilt 1.0.

Photo by Emily Morter on Unsplash

The promises being made regarding the new Bilt cards are rather grandiose, especially the Palladium Bilt (which comes with a $495 pricetag), but the features of these cards are only lukewarm and confusing. Moreover, the promoters have been unable or unwilling to answer many basic questions about the use and limitation of use of the Bilt Cash, the currency of the new model. I have no idea whether this lack of clarity is due to disorganization or to lack of honesty, but either way, I should not be left to guess. This is not an escape room or a mirrored maze, guys.

My life is complicated enough, without spending all week reading all the publications exalting the virtues of these new cards as well as many forums, taking the opposite view, likening Bilt 2.0 to an unsubstantiated house of cards at best. The truth is, at this time, I already have a lot of points and miles that I’d like to use rather than chase more.

As I see it, the whole idea of a new credit card, is to make something easier and to enhance your well being in some manner, not the opposite. I do suffer from FOMO, and sometimes I’m drawn to these promises (especially the supposedly risk free 50,000 Bilt points that come with the Palladium card), but I keep shaking my head that something here does not add up.

Bilt has given a deadline of the end of the month to accept the new transitional card (but you still must apply for it, which in and of itself adds to the confusion). But, even if I decline the transitional card now, I’m sure, if the cards are living up to the promises, there will be more offers in the future. That’s a chance I’ll have to take.

I’ll wait out February 1, and for the last time, I’ll pay my rent fee-free. I’ll also transfer my existing Bilt points to a transfer partner (probably Hyatt). And then I’ll move on.

Photo by Tolu Akinyemi on Unsplash

So, Bilt, this may or may not be farewell. It’s been real and I thank you for the ride, however short it may have been.