Bilt will be back with a British Airways transfer bonus of up to 100% for December 1 Rent Day. As they often do, the magnitude of the bonus depends on your status with Bilt Rewards
- Blue: 50% bonus
- Silver: 60% bonus
- Gold: 75% bonus
- Platinum: 100% bonus
I’ve worked to earn Bilt Platinum status again for next year. But I’m not going to take advantage of this, for a totally irrational reason. I have seven figure balances in major transfer currencies – Chase, American Express, and Capital One – and now that Bilt partners with Rakuten I have a path to a seven figure balance with them also. I kind of don’t want to drain my Bilt account before I hit that.
Bilt is also offering a gift card redemption bonus for 7 days that doesn’t interest me, but for some with the highest bonus offers and little interest in points transfers it’ll hold some value. I suspect that venn diagram is pretty limited, though. (Blue: 25% bonus; Silver: 50% bonus; Gold: 75% bonus; Platinum: 100% bonus)
- Day 1 (11/25): Macy’s, Apple, Nordstrom
- Day 2 (11/26): Uber Eats, Dominos, Panera
- Day 3 (11/27): Instacart, Safeway, Kroger
- Day 4 (11/28): Home Depot, Wayfair, Quince
- Day 5 (11/29): Amtrak, Airbnb, Chevron & Texaco
- Day 6 (11/30): AMC, Spotify, YouTube TV
- Day 7 (12/1): All brands available
They’ve also got their usual Neighborhood Comedy Series; Neighborhood Dining Series; Neighborhood Fitness Experiences; Rent Free game; and standard co-brand card double points up to 1,000 bonus points.
Plus they’re running a complimentary item offer with José Andrés Group’s Mercado Little Spain, with 600 flaky fried pastries from Catalunya filled with chocolate and hazelnut cream given away December 1 at 31 Bond Street, complimentary to Bilt members along with a coffee.
I don’t know, if you have ~3-4m points lying around, why not park 100k points with Avios and get 200k Avios. Low stakes and you can still build up a nice amount with Bilt. Of all of the airline specific currencies, Avios can be used across many different airlines. And if you are ever trying to get the family over to London, you can sometimes do pretty well with the “upgrade with Avios” availability from PE to business on BA if you can get a good fare on PE (which you sometimes can). Still a flat 24k avios pp each way (so 48k round trip) plus the surcharge of course (which varies…). Can be very hard to find 4 business award seats together (as I am sure you know well), but there’s sometimes decent availability with BA and it’s not a crazy use of 192k avios depending on the cost of PE and the surcharges (especially with the 100% bonus).
I very much appreciate you are admitting it is irrational (and no reason we all cannot do irrational things in life!) but it does remind me a bit of the trap that George Clooney’s character fell into in Up in the Air – when you just have a number in mind, it might feel a little hollow once you get there. Not saying you need to redeem miles for a reader’s honeymoon or anything! Just a thought.