It’s safe to say that the launch of Bilt 2.0 hasn’t gone how Bilt hoped. Bilt CEO Ankur Jain has taken to reddit to announce that there will be two options when paying rent.
Option 1 (New)
| Points on Housing | Minimum everyday spend as a % of monthly rent / mortgage (Example of $2,000 rent) |
|---|---|
| 0.5x points | Spend at least 25% of monthly rent ($500) |
| 0.75x points | Spend at least 50% of monthly rent ($1,000) |
| 1x points | Spend at least 75% of monthly rent ($1,500) |
| 1.25x points | Spend the same or more as your monthly rent ($2,000 |
Option 2 (Previously Announced)
This is the option that was previously announced.
- Earn 4% back in Bilt Cash on everyday purchases, in addition to base points. Think of Bilt Cash as “choose your own reward”.
- Pay your full rent or mortgage every month with no transaction fee
- You can use as little or as much of your Bilt Cash to increase the total points you earn on housing that month and you do not ever pay anything out of pocket.
- You can also redeem Bilt Cash dollar-for-dollar for monthly credits across the Bilt ecosystem (with monthly, merchant-specific caps), or for exclusive benefits like higher transfer bonuses and special access to experiences.
Our Verdict
The problem with this relaunch and these newer changes is that the value proposition isn’t easy to explain or understand. Pay rent with credit card with no fee, earn rewards is simple to understand. Requiring redeeming Bilt cash towards fees etc is not. Not everybody wants to be min-maxing every last thing. Somehow this change makes things even more difficult to understand. I think if they had launched the new option 1 they would have had more success in communicating this relaunch. The fact we still don’t have a list of redemption options for Bilt cash is damning.
How I would have done things differently:
- Make the changes and value proposition easier to understand
- Communicate the changes well ahead of the relaunch date (added benefit of this is you can communicate the changes before needing to add things to the website causing leaks)
- Have a F.A.Q. ready to go (not two days after launch)
- Provide redemption options for Bilt cash
- Extended the TPG exclusive bonus to more blogs
- Extended the TPG exclusive bonus so it lasted more than 24 hours (especially when you are making changes to the program on the fly)
I think that Bilt 2.0 still provides a lot of value in most use cases but this relaunch has been a bit of a disaster. Also whoever negotiated the original Wells Fargo deal deserves a medal. I did find this comment from Ankur particularly funny:
It is probably not a surprise to any of you, but if members only purchase four bananas and earn free rent points, it doesn’t allow us to sustain such a rich value proposition for everyone.
