Bilt cards being frozen, 5x not being honored. (Update: Bilt investigating case-by-case)

Update 2/13:26: Yesterday, Bilt sent an email to members saying that cardholders who were affected by any of the problems with the 5x promo listed below (frozen cards, offer not attached, late-arriving cards) should file a claim for review:

If you believe you qualified for the 5X for 5 Days Promotional Offer¹ and did not receive it, or received the promotion and had issues utilizing your card during the offer period, please complete the form by February 18th at 11:59 PM ET so our team can review your submission. 

If Bilt determines that you are eligible, you’ll be given the option to either receive a new 5x promo from 2/20-2/24 or have the promo retroactively applied to your purchases from the original promo period, which began on 2/7. The email came from notifications@alerts.biltrewards.com, so if you didn’t receive it, check your spam folder. Note that you must contact Bilt to initiate a review. It won’t happen automatically.

~~~Original Post Follows~~~

The new Bilt 2.0 cards – Bilt Blue, Bilt Obsidian, and Bilt Palladium – went live on Saturday February 7. Bilt promised that this would be a seamless transition, but in addition to the myriad of other issues that have made the transition seem less, there’s now a brand new issue.

Over the weekend, we saw widespread reports in our Facebook group, on Reddit, and in other private groups that cardholders were encountering issues with declined transactions on their new Bilt cards, with those cards subsequently being frozen.

There have been other issues with the 5x earning rate that many cardholders should’ve been eligible for not being honored, with an abysmal response from Bilt’s CEO.

5x frozen

That’s annoying enough as it is, but it’s particularly frustrating for the large subset of cardholders who signed up for the cards within the first 24 hours using the affiliate link on The Points Guy website (which we also shared on this site as that was the best offer at the time). That welcome offer included a 5x spending offer on up to $10,000 spend in the first six days in addition to the 50,000 point welcome offer, meaning a total of 100,000 bonus points were available.

Needless to say, people who were able to get in on that offer wanted to do their best to start maxing out the 5x spending component over the weekend. While some people were able to get a few purchases approved, many others reported that their transactions were declined and cards subsequently frozen even when not making purchases that were in any way substantial.

In order to get their cards unlocked, cardholders have to provide ID. However, despite immediately providing that, some cardholders are still waiting for their cards to be unlocked. With the clock ticking on the six day timeframe where eligible cardholders can earn 5x, this is seriously hampering people’s ability to max that out.

Even the means of providing ID is amateurish. This Reddit user had their card frozen after their first purchase attempt and the email from Cardless said the following:

Your security is our priority, so we have suspended your account while we conduct an investigation. To assist in our investigation, we need additional verification of your identity. Please send the following items in a reply to this email:

**- A current picture of you while holding** your valid state or government-issued photo ID
– Review your account and let us know if you see any unauthorized activity

Once we receive the requested information, please allow up to two days for our review to be completed.

Your account will remain suspended until we complete our investigation.

Thank you,
The Cardless Team

Sending a selfie of yourself with your state or government-issued ID over email – rather than via a secure method – is far from ideal.

5x not attached

There’s been a whole other issue regarding the 5x application links too. Many people applied using the TPG link within 24 hours before Bilt abruptly pulled that promotion. Bilt didn’t provide a way for cardholders to see if that bonus earning rate was attached to their card, so some people understandably used Bilt’s chat feature to verify that the 5x rate was indeed attached.

Unfortunately, it’s an AI chatbot and it sounds like it was pretty much always advising people that the offer wasn’t attached. After asking to speak to a real-life (and hopefully not also hallucinating) human agent, some people did receive confirmation that the 5x was attached. Sadly, many others were told that they weren’t eligible for the 5x – even though they were – and so it wasn’t attached to their account.

Bilt also sent out an email to some cardholders on February 6 (the day before the cards went live) confirming that they had the 5x offer attached. In true Bilt 2.D’oh fashion, they also sent that email to people who knew for sure that they hadn’t used the TPG link in the first 24 hours of applications going live.

That wasn’t the only incorrect email. Other people – myself included – received an email encouraging us to add an authorized user to our Bilt card. That’s despite the fact that we’re not cardholders (and, for me at least, have never had a Bilt credit card in the first place). They did at least subsequently send an “Oops” email.

Delays with physical cards being mailed

The “seem less” transition issues don’t stop there. Despite some people applying for a Bilt card weeks ago, they haven’t received their physical card yet even though they were assured at the time that they’d have it in hand by February 6 at the latest.

In fact, in at least one case we’ve seen, a cardholder isn’t due to receive their card until February 17 – a full week from now and more than 10 days after the latest date that it should’ve arrived. This is someone who did have the 5x offer attached to their account, but that delay in the card being issued means they’re unable to make any purchases using that physical card. Mobile wallet purchases are still possible, but that’s not always going to be a viable option for affected cardholders.

Bilt’s stance: Pound sand

We reached out to Bilt over the weekend when first hearing reports of cards being frozen. We asked if affected cardholders would be given an extended 5x spending period due to the inability to make purchases and, if so, how many extra days they’ll be given.

In addition to that, we asked about the issue with people not having the 5x spending offer attached to their account in the first place.

We haven’t heard back from them yet, so we’ll update this post if and when we do receive a reply.

That said, the prospect of any kind of satisfactory resolution appears to be highly unlikely. A Reddit user sent a DM to Bilt CEO Ankur Jain and received the following response (spelling, grammatical, and punctuation errors are per his reply):

Sorry we can’t accept anything on TPG. This was a TPG offer not us. And we were given a list of participants.

In the past few days I’ve received thousands of people claiming to have participated with hundreds using the same identical screenshots (clearly all shared in online groups), many also sending doctored images etc

Not saying that’s your case here. But the attempt at showing good faith to a few people early on has clearly backfired and thousands of people online sending in fake requests has meant we can’t honor anything beyond what TPG provided us.

Sorry not a better answer. Have always tried taking care of Bilt members first but seeing the extreme levels of gaming and false inbounds has hurt our ability to make exceptions for good customers like you.

There will be plenty of ongoing promos that you be able to take advantage of.

Thanks for understanding and for being a bilt members

That’s a crazy policy. I can understand Bilt’s frustration that some people are probably trying to game the system, but I can also imagine that a not insignificant number of people who they think are gaming aren’t actually doing that. There are many reports of people who’d legitimately applied within the 24 hours that the TPG link was live not having the 5x earning rate honored. If they didn’t happen to take screenshots, video recordings, etc. at the time of their application, it wouldn’t surprise me if many of them are subsequently relying on other people’s screenshots. That doesn’t mean they’re trying to scam Bilt – they’re simply trying to resolve the problems caused by Bilt themselves.

It’s also wild that Ankur is explicitly placing all the blame on The Points Guy. The 5x offer link was indeed advertised on the TPG website, but that special offer was done in partnership with Bilt and the earning rate is being processed by Bilt; it’s not like TPG is awarding the 5x points themselves. As a result, Bilt should’ve had proper processes in place to track eligible applications not only on the TPG side, but on the Cardless side too. If they didn’t set it up that Cardless could also track where applications were coming from and when those applications were submitted, that points to rank incompetence on Bilt’s end, not TPG’s.

The post Bilt cards being frozen, 5x not being honored. (Update: Bilt investigating case-by-case) appeared first on Frequent Miler. Frequent Miler may receive compensation from CHASE. American Express, Capital One, or other partners.