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Bilt Rewards, the program that lets you earn transferable points paying rent, turns two. And each month they offer rich promotions the first of the month for ‘Rent Day’.
- Each month they’ve offered double points for spend on their credit card (6x on dining, 4x on travel, 2x on everything else – up to 10,000 bonus points) plus free points for trivia and other offers like free Soul Cycle classes.
- And there’s generally a one-off, like airline or hotel status with one of their partners or a generous transfer bonus (they’re the only program ever that I’m aware of to offer 100% bonuses transferring points to 1:1 partners like Hawaiian Airlines and Air France KLM).
June 1 the special offer, on top of free points for trivia and double points for credit card spend, is “big with gifts for all Bilt members who solve The Rent Day Challenge.”
In the Rent Day tab of the Bilt mobile app you can solve the Rent Day Challenge word puzzle for an immediate prize form one of their partners (here are full offer terms):
- 25; 50; 10,000; or 100,000 Bilt Points
- 5,000 or 25,000 Bilt Points to spend on Bilt Collection merchandize (some cool stuff and interesting art)
- $100 Lyft Ride Credit
- 1 Month of Free Rent
- Virgin roundtrip business class for two to London in the form of points
- Emirates roundtrip business class for two to Dubai in the form of points
You can still also earn Bilt Points by answering trivia questions in their Point Quest game in the app on June 1 (5 questions, win up to 150 Bilt Points, answer all 5 correctly for a bonus question worth 100 more points).
Key details of the Bilt World Elite Mastercard and the Bilt Rewards program (you do not need to be a co-brand cardmember to take advantage of many of their offerings, like their dining and Lyft programs or most of rent day):
- Earning: This card matches Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card with 3x on dining and 2x on travel, but does so with no annual fee. You must make at least 5 purchases per month to earn points. Plus earning on rent: This is something that no one else does. You can pay your rent on the card – they charge your card and send payment to your landlord – and you do not pay anything for this service. If you did this via Plastiq you’d pay 2.9%, so if your rent is $3,000 per month that’s $1,044 per year in fees that this card is saving you while still allowing you to earn points. Rent is the biggest expense that most people have, and they aren’t earning points for it unless they have this card.
- Additional ways to earn in the program: like earning points for Lyft rides (they’re the most lucrative Lyft partner for this in my view) and a new dining program to earn 5x points at restaurants on top of your usual credit card earning and that stacks whether you have a Bilt credit card or not.
- Great redemption options: You can redeem for rent or Amazon (please don’t, too many more lucrative ways to use your points) or use points towards paid travel at 1.25 cents per point, even on Disney which most travel portals exclude, though my favorite is points transfers.
Bilt is the only program with American AAdvantage as a transfer partner, and they’re unique in having both American and United. Plus they have Air Canada and Turkish in Star; Briitsh Airways, Iberia and Cathay Pacific (lower fuel surcharges on BA) in oneworld; Air France KLM in SkyTeam (the only good SkyTeam program tbh); plus Aer Lingus; Emirates; Hawaiian; Virgin Atlantic. And for hotels they have IHG and the single best hotel points transfer, Hyatt.
The biggest criticism I hear of Bilt is that they’re too generous, that they must be burning through a ton of VC cash (they’ve raised a lot at a $1.5 billion valuation, the fastest company ever to hit that mark). Now, I don’t think that’s true. They have a co-brand deal with Wells Fargo, and a lot of people redeem their points at low value for rent or Amazon rather than transferring to miles. They’re just returning an outsized amount of the value they collect to the customer, unlike programs that insist on greater than 50% margins. But I say this: when a program wants to reward you too much, you let them.
Click. Bait.
The dining program has a grand total of three participating restaurants in Dallas. Basically useless.
@L3 – I just searched and it looks to me like there are 230 participating restaurants in Dallas.
@Gary: Correct. Click “Best of DAL” to go from 3 to the full list. Very confusing.
@L3 – your search was limiting to those on a best list, so you got rid of that filter I think?
@Gary: Yes. It defaulted to “filter on” (which, as a matter of design, it shouldn’t).
Am I the only one who finds these underwhelming? You have to solve the puzzle, and as y’all flag in the post, the most likely outcome is…25 or 50 points. A pittance compared to some past promotions. Or points for The Collection? Meh.