Search Results for: bilt shut down

Background

I couldn’t find an affiliate blog that wasn’t talking about Richard Kerr’s / Bilt’s Blit’s new Cardless issued credit card lineup yesterday. Of course being the subject that affiliates talk about for a day doesn’t necessarily mean the Bilt lineup is bad, but it does mean you should be even more skeptical than normal and look at the content as though it were written by a marketing agency, because it was. But I’m getting ahead of myself, let’s MEAB style distill the news without 2,000 word articles:

  • Bilt commemorated the launch with a stupid banana trophy to make fun of manufactured spenders
  • There are three flavors cards, each with a different annual fee, multiplier, and set of coupon credits:
    • $0 annual fee, 1x everywhere
    • $95 annual fee, 3x on dining or grocery (max $25,000), 2x travel, 1x everywhere
    • $495 annual fee, 2x everywhere
  • Bilt invented a new currency that’s earned at 4x, Itchy and Scratchy Money Bilt Cash
  • Bilt Cash’s only use is to allow you to earn points for paying your rent or mortgage with a Bilt card
  • For the only churner on the planet without a Priority Pass, $495 will get you one
  • There are more hotel credits that aren’t really worth much
  • There are small sign-up bonuses

There are other largely meaningless card features too, but I promise they almost certainly don’t matter to an average churner.

Talking Points that Affiliates Can’t Say

Affiliate relationships tightly control the content of news articles, so let’s mention a few things that they can’t:

  • Cardless doesn’t like manufactured spenders
  • A shutdown from Cardless is a lifetime Cardless ban
  • There’s a good chance that a Cardless shutdown means forfeited points for the most recent statement cycle
  • Bilt’s best transfer partner is Hyatt – you can spend $495 for 2x Hyatt everywhere with Bilt and it might last a while without cycling, but you can earn 1.5x Hyatt everywhere with a Chase Ink Unlimited which is much more tolerant and has a much bigger sign-up bonus
  • Many of the card’s advertised benefits come by virtue of being a Mastercard and you’ve probably got those same benefits on other cards
  • If you use an affiliate blogger’s link, they’re earning several hundreds of dollars in Bilt kickback; their sign-up bonus is probably bigger than yours (by all means, support affiliate bloggers if you like them, just make it a conscious choice and not a default one)

Finally, let’s talk about converting existing Wells Fargo Bilt cards:

  • You’re going to have yet another new personal card on your credit report
  • You may not be approved even if you have the Wells Fargo card
  • You’ve got to decide to convert by January 30 to avoid another hard pull
  • You won’t get a sign-up bonus as part of the conversion

For those keeping track at home, this is the third new credit card on personal credit reports for early Bilt adopters.

The MEAB Wrap

The affiliate hype machine is great at getting the word out and great at getting you excited, but it’s also good at glossing over the negatives. When a media blitz hits, be extra careful. There’s value in Bilt 2.0, but there’s plenty of downside too and a looming threat of a shutdown.

What’s my takeaway? Well, personally I just want the banana trophy or a replica as a peace offering from Richard Kerr.

Happy Thursday!

Look, sometimes misspellings are intentional, just ask Dell about its Caps Lcok key.

Introduction

The Bilt credit card program has had a few missteps over the years, they’ve cut the earning structure on the card, and they’ve told us about a couple more negative enhancements coming soon:

(Side note: On October 7, I wrote “Hopefully the ratio of Rakuten points to Bilt Rewards will be 1:1, but given Richard Kerr’s involvement I wouldn’t call that a foregone conclusion. Go ahead Richard, prove me wrong.” Oops.)

Bilt is practicing death by a thousand cuts, and we may have reached the “one cut too many” threshold.

The Good and Bad

Let’s talk about the good of the Bilt credit card and Bilt Rewards program, both of which are made better together:

  • Hyatt, Alaska, and JAL are valuable transfer partners
  • Periodic 50-100% transfer bonuses
  • A “kewl helicopter ride” after major spend
  • Rewards on rent payments (though the card isn’t required for that, it’s just better with the card)

But, there’s plenty of negativity go with that, moreso when Cardless takes over the program on February 7, 2026:

  • Earning multipliers are relatively poor
  • Cardless isn’t friendly to churners, and is sometimes actively hostile and vindictive
  • Bilt+Rakuten (see above)
  • New account on your credit report (see above)
  • Unknown earning and annual fee structure going forward
  • Customer service is objectively bad

Personally, I can handle two or even three of these negatives, but taken as a whole, I’m over the edge, this thing no longer makes sense. Stick a fork in it, it’s done.

The Exceptions

Your situation isn’t the same as mine, and you’re all adults so obviously you can make your own assessment. But, there are a few cases where Bilt might still make sense:

  • You’re shutdown by Chase and you want Hyatt points or United miles
  • You don’t care about a new account showing on your credit report
  • Maybe the unknown Cardless Bilt card family’s earning structure is better
  • You want to earn Bilt points on rent payments without other games
  • You have a Kerr-resistant loophole

Of course, you do you, and remember it’s good advice to not blindly listen to a rando on the internet, even on a Tuesday.

Happy Tuesday!

Bilt credit card: Current status.

We’re in an extended period of Chase shutdowns that started a week ago, and while we don’t know the complete causes, related factors might be:

  • Heavy use at a manufactured spender fitness club
  • Earning a sign-up bonus at a manufactured spender fitness club or popular rebate site, even with light spending
  • Using Chase Ink card links that bypassed backend business approval logic

If you’re caught up in shutdowns, there are options to squeeze Chase back, not all is lost:

  • Call or write the Chase Executive office and open a case
    This is only likely to be fruitful if you’re shutdown for rewards abuse and don’t have heavy manufactured spend, or if you’re shutdown due to bust-out risk. For body builders, I don’t expect a ton of success here
  • Exercise the arbitration clause in your account agreements
    I’m not an attorney and I’m definitely not your attorney, so don’t take this as legal advice. I imagine that having a manufactured spend friendly attorney on your side couldn’t hurt though
  • Wait seven to ten years and you may find yourself back in
    Yes it’s a long time, but it’s not forever
  • Find new players
    Isolate addresses to avoid any contagion spread through
  • Try and open a Chase Private Client account in branch
    Wait six months to do it, and you’ll need $100,000 or more in assets typically
  • Pivot to other banks for cash, United, and Hyatt
    Bilt is an option. You weren’t using Ultimate Rewards for much else, I assume?

Fortunately there are thousands of banks and credit unions out there that offer credit cards that still want your business. Always be probing!

Squeezing Chase if Chase were a GM car.

EDITOR’S NOTE: If this message put your mail reader on the struggle bus, check the web version.

Introduction

It’s time for MEAB’s annual New Year tradition! Before we jump in to the regular short-form blog posts that litter the ground like losing tickets at the horse races, we’re starting with an annual MEAB tradition: Telling the story of 2025 through the historical lens of the rigorous academia of (checks notes, sighs): Animated GIFs.

Previous versions of the New Year’s special: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020

Churning in 2025: Broad Strokes

Churning in 2025: A summary.

Every churning group discussing 2025.

Not everything in 2025, was bad. For example, dining had its moments.

The American Express Business Platinum sign-up bonuses increased to 300,000 miles toward the moon Membership Rewards.

The Pepper (Moocho? Mucho? Moo-choo?) Saga

Pepper Rewards was a big part of churning last year.

We spent January and February conjuring points with increasingly ludicrous Pepper sales. Earning 80,000 Membership Rewards daily was child’s play.

The end of March hits and SideShowBob233 gets ready to redeem his stockpile of Pepper rewards. There’s a hiccup, but it’s probably temporary, right?

Waiting for Pepper points to be able to be redeemed in April.

Actively trying to get Pepper points redeemed in June.

July hits, still working on Pepper.

Finally autumn lands and the Pepper CEO shows us what the company’s real plans have been all along.

The Community

Everyone in travel hacking and churning is a little bit weird, and that’s ok. This year we’ve got a dedicated section to celebrate our churning personalties.

The elusive Danny describes his churning profits for 2025.

Chad at Automated Miles drops his Halloween episode.

Mojo interacts with the community in The Pepperdome™.

Carl trains his next batch of players for 2026.

Connor from Churning Life gets his Sunday morning AirPods delivery.

Vinh gets the wrath of FNBO.

Parts_Unknown- and C-MontgomeryChurns keep Redditors focused on churning.

The Points Guy trains its next intern.

LonelyCat’s team in action.

Riley writes another article at Chasing Cetaceans

Country_Boy expertly finds the punchline in an ocean of targets, and isn’t happy with just a single hit.

Richard Kerr reacts to appearing again on the little known turbo-nerd site run by a reclusive newbie, MEAB.

Woody Allen presents “SideShowBob233: A Churning Documentary”

MEAB’s P2 reacts to the feedback from this year’s guest post.

The Behaviors

A churner misunderstands what we meant by looping.

Churners find out that we’re probably losing our $50 Saks credits. We’ll never have to think about them again.

Citi responds to a churner’s KYC answers with an adverse action.

A singular churner escapes 2025 unharmed against all odds.

Costco finds its way into dining and other churning games.

A churner realizes he’ll need to reenter the workforce after the US Bank Altitude Reserve devaluation.

The entire information content of a certain cash-back debit card’s WhatsApp group.

The Card Companies and FinTechs

The Mesa Homeowners card in one act.

Synchrony Bank finally learns what the floosies are up to.

Citi finally had its way with the Barclays AA relationship.

PayPal Bill Pay has a nuclear meltdown, our favorite targets crumble.

Hilton enhanced its elite levels, aiming squarely at existing Diamond members.

We unsuccessfully tried to navigate Kasheesh’s terms and conditions, trying to get anything – literally anything – to work.

Citi’s algorithms chased Strata Elite cardholders with 4506-C requests.

Citi reacted to a Wall Street Journal public shaming over Strata Elite applications.

Airlines and Hotels

US airlines and hotels collectively said “we may not have started the race to the bottom, but damnit, we’re going to win it!”

A Concierge Key elite asks an AA gate agent about being added to the standby list.

Marriott Bonvoy recognizes a Gold elite collecting 500 points at check-in.

Southwest prepares for, and executes, its transformation plans for 2025.

Southwest realizes that it’s funner when paid bags get lost.

JetBlue added JAL as a partner, and you could book into JAL business and first paid fare buckets with miles.

Less than a year later, JetBlue and JAL breakup.

Travel hackers react after Blit [Blit]adds JAL as a transfer partner.

Travel hackers then react after Capital One added JAL as a transfer partner too.

Alaska Atmos became particularly useful for ultra short haul.

MEAB

I guess we couldn’t have GIFs without MEAB, so let’s round out the year with the community and MEAB:

Affiliate bloggers react to yet another MEAB post.

Affiliate and non-affiliate bloggers alike react to a MEAB post about nervous ticks.

Professor MEAB presents at a meetup.

Then MEAB isn’t seen in the wild again, though a music video dropped on December 15, 2025.

And finally on January 1, 2026, MEAB makes a grand reappearance to an empty stadium with every single one of the site’s adoring fans.

Happy New Year!

2026: A Preview

  1. Do this now: Register for Hyatt’s promotion for 777 bonus points per night at casino hotels through September 30. (Un)fortunately, the dirty castle is no longer part of Hyatt’s portfolio and the Rio is a poor stand-in.
  2. Do this now: Make backup bookings for any existing Advantage car rental reservations because they may be in the midst of collapse.
  3. Staples has fee-free $200 Mastercards in store through Saturday, limit nine per transaction.

    These are Pathward gift cards.
  4. US Bank has a $450 checking bonus for new Smartly checking accounts with $8,000+ spread over two direct deposits, or over two “direct deposits”, the first of which has to happen in 30 days. This is mainly interesting for establishing a Smartly account for higher payouts on the related but different US Bank Smartly credit card.

    If you’re not in US Bank’s footprint, opening a brokerage account first will get your foot in the door for other products.
  5. Bilt Blit is losing their relationship with Wells Fargo in favor of Cardless with three tiers of cards in (probably) June 2026. After the transition, it’ll probably switch from the Mastercard network to the American Express network. Is that a net positive or negative? Depends on your game I suppose, but at least Cardless dropped its one card per lifetime rule.
  6. American Express Offers has a targeted offer for $40 off of $200+ at Caesars through October 31.

Happy Monday friends!

From US Bank’s FAQ: Even they understand that direct deposits are often “direct deposits”

Bilt, a company best known (according to me) for inadvertently advertising how to abuse their program just weeks after sending a “you’re shutdown” email followed by a “j/k j/k” email to a bunch of cardholders, added Japan Airlines Milage Bank as a 1:1 transfer partner yesterday

The landing page for the linking your Bilt and JAL accounts includes the language:

“If your JAL Mileage Bank account is less than 60 days old, there will be up to a 7 day hold before you can use JAL miles to book travel.”

It turns out that Bilt is inadvertently teaching us another lesson, which is that unseasoned accounts can often cause you to be unable to use your miles until your account is old enough or until you jump through hoops like:

Having older accounts with some activity mitigates these problems, so when you do your churning spring cleaning, consider seasoning mileage accounts that you may use in the future.

Happy Wednesday!

Seasoning on Southwest hits different.

EDITOR’S NOTE: No, it wasn’t anything to do with daylight savings time, it was the AM/PM thing with yesterday’s post. You can find it here if you never saw it once fixed. Actually, you can find it there whether or not you saw it once fixed.

  1. The Chase Hyatt cards have increased bonuses through March 6:

    – Personal: 35,000 points with $3,000 spend in three months plus 2x points on unbounded spend for six months, up to $15,000 spend
    – Business: 60,000 points after $5,000 spend in three months, and a Category 1-4 free night certificate after $15,000 spend in six months

    Both of these have some utility, but the business one is a clear winner if you can make use of a Category 1-4. I can always make use of them, but that doesn’t mean they’re not annoying.
  2. On Wednesday we discussed Choice Hotel devalued redemptions, and apparently that was an oopsie on Choice’s part, much like when Bilt accidentally sent shutdown letters to many of its cardholders that weren’t shut down.

    Prices were supposed to revert to normal yesterday, but some European and Asian properties have redemptions with half the regular points needed, so I guess we discovered the mythical loyalty program de-devaluation and ended up better than we were before. This is probably an accident to though, which (accidentally) seems to be Choice’s 2025 modus operandi.
  3. Giant Food, Stop & Shop, and Giant/Martins stores have 2x points on Vanilla Visa gift cards through Thursday, limit $1,500 – $2,000 per account depending on the chain. (Thanks to RabbMD)
  4. Wells Fargo has a $2,500 bonus for opening or upgrading to a Premier Checking account and bringing $250,000 in new assets within 45 days through February 25. Investment accounts and IRAs count, so you can ACATS transfer funds from another brokerage into a Wells Fargo investment account without a taxable event.

    Coincidentally, $250,000 in linked accounts is what you need to avoid monthly service fees too. (Thanks to DoC)

Have a nice weekend, and watch for tomorrow’s guest post!

Even Choice Hotel plumbers accidentally did their work.

Introduction

It’s time for MEAB’s annual New Year tradition! Before we jump in to the regular short-form blog posts that litter the ground like glitter in a stadium after a Taylor Swift concert: A recap of travel hacking and manufactured spend in the last year with the most sophisticated, Shakespearean, high-brow form of story telling known to the modern world (checks notes, furrows brow): Animated GIFs.

Previous versions of the New Years special:

The GIFening

Is it “GIF” with a hard G like “girl”, or with a soft G like “jiffy”? Obviously there’s a right answer, anyhoodles, let’s dive in with the intensity of the Spirit airlines stock price dive in November.

We started out January 2024 wishing for a Technotronic inspired aircraft livery at KLM, which frankly set the stage for 2024 in so many ways; 2024 was poised to be the best year yet, and Technotronic was bound to break the top 40 again.

Reality came fast and dashed our dreams though, with American Express telling us in January that 40 products would be retooled in the coming year, and that Technotronic hadn’t done anything new for over 15 years.

United raised the cost of Lufthansa First and ANA First redemptions, the latter doubling in price. That’s ok though, we can just fly business class, right?

Then we tried flying Lufthansa Business Class, and well, uh, this P2 says it best.

The Justice Department decided to block the JetBlue and Spirit merger.

Spirit Airlines executives react to the blocked merger, get ready to get back to work.

Southwest had its own crisis when Elliott Management became a majority shareholder and demanded major changes and new fees at Southwest. Probably in the name of altruism?

In the credit card space, the shrewd Goldman Sachs reacted to its massive Apple Card losses.

Based on language in the Terms and Conditions, it looked like the American Express Business Platinum $400 annual Dell credits would be going away at the end of 2024.

Then, we, uhhh, “celebrate” that they’re coming back in 2025.

On the other hand, churning Business Platinums and getting 99 employee cards with sign-up bonuses kept going all through 2024, marking more than three consecutive years of the employee sign-up bonus game.

American Express dropped a December surprise with the addition of $50 quarterly credits at Hilton properties on the Business Platinum card. It doesn’t move the needle, but hey, it doesn’t hurt.

Synapse collapses, leaving Yotta and Juno accounts in limbo and ultimately costing consumers than $85 Million in lost deposits.

In the first days after the Synapse collapse, community “experts” come out of the woodwork to tell us that no one is going to lose money based on solid evidence and “something something FDIC”.

Meanwhile, Bilt accidentally sent shutdown notices to many of its card holders, even though they weren’t shutdown.

Then Bilt’s VP of Rewards provided some of the best clues for a manufactured spend technique that many of his followers knew nothing about.

Chase opened new Sapphire Lounges which are some of the best lounges in the US, but then blew the goodwill by removing its Priority Pass restaurant benefit.

The biggest Buyer’s Group spenders spent 24 hours straight, awake in front of the computer on Black Friday.

Travel hackers made their first transfer of Membership Rewards to Alaska MileagePlan via the Hawaiian airlines integration.

American Express sees massive restaurant spend after floosies learn to cycle millions while dining out, decides to take action.

The American Express Gold card gets a $50,000 annual dining 4x spend capacity, and AmEx executives rejoice.

They also instituted a one million Membership Rewards cash-out annual cap at 1.1 cents per point on the Schwab Platinum card, and they called us names while doing it.

SideshowBob233 (pictured in costume) reacts to churners on his flight that have Chase deposit accounts.

Mesa executives wait for sufficient time to pass between a bad MEAB post and their impending launch.

MEAB (pictured on the right side) at a travel hacking conference meets other bloggers.

A churner finds a way out of pop-up jail.

And after getting out of pop-up jail, the churner realizes it may be repeatable.

MEAB does another math post (or two), tries to show off.

We rode high on cash-back debits in early 2024.

A few of those plays died, but we found workarounds, we just needed to think outside the box.

Kudos raced with shopping portals for payouts.

Virgin Atlantic became relevant with the introduction of the Virgin Credit card and its perks, some payment fun, and the introduction of dynamic pricing.

Critics review MEAB.

SAS announces a promotion to earn a million miles for flying on 15 different SkyTeam partners in Q4, travel hackers react.

SAS realizes people are taking their promotion seriously, and races to build its SkyTeam integration with quirky airlines.

Readers try and follow the hints in MEAB wisdom posts.

Botting several key deals made the money flow.

Tallying Carl’s 2024 earnings, prolly.

MEAB’s P2 flies Lufthansa First class for the first time.

Pepper Saga Part I:
Getting unlimited 10% off of Walmart, BestBuy, and Sam’s Club cards (Q1-Q2).

Pepper Saga Part II:
Unlimited 10% stops working, but new, daily targeted promotions start working after a hiccup or two.

Pepper Saga Part III:
Gift card resale rates fall in slow motion due to oversupply.

Pepper Saga Part IV:
A pitch deck for new investors claiming a total addressable market of $6 trillion, approximately 23% of the US GDP.

Pepper Saga Part V:
The company gives unlimited 20% off of Amazon and Walmart gift cards for a day and is probably nearly out of money.

Pepper Saga Part VI:
A Q1 2025 preview (Probably)

Pepper Saga Part VII:
(space left intentionally blank)

“Seat 21A? I didn’t know first class went back this far.”

“Oh no.”

[4 and 1/2 hours later after touchdown in seat 21A]

2024 finally redeems itself when Technotronic rewrote “Pump Up the Jam” for Bob’s Burgers in late 2024, proving to us that Belgium’s flagship band still has a chance at a KLM livery.

Happy 2025 friends!