Im annoyed at Bilt

meant to post this in February but now its April whomp whomp

Bilt is a credit card that you can pay your rent with. “Amanda that’s bad! Oh my god stop!” Yeah yeah yeah I know. But I live in Los Angeles, and have been using Bilt since 2021.

Here is how Bilt gets you. Most rental management companies allow you to pay your rent with a credit card except you have pay a processing fee. Therefore you are able to pay your rent with a credit card but it will cost you more. My old building in Hollywood announced we would be switching over to Bilt for processing our rent payments a couple of months after I had moved in. More streamlined and you can turn on credit reporting, earn points, and build credit simply for paying your rent. No option to not join.

So for several months I used Bilt just as my rent processer, linked my bank account and earned the max 250 points per on time rent payment made from the app. This was also the time when I was really into point hacking (whomp whomp) so when I saw that if I got the Bilt Mastercard I could pay my rent and get the full amount worth of points as well as a host of other points options, it seemed like a brilliant idea. I already had the amount for my rent in my bank account, so I would pay my rent with the Bilt card, then pay it off within five days. Kept my balance low and only used it for food purchases because the points were best for food.

I functioned like this for a few years. I really liked Bilt to be frank. I used it “correctly” and all that and I did like their rewards for points including at a certain amount of points you could use it towards part of your rent if you wanted. I personally liked the seasonal rewards they would do like a pixel clock or a real nice ceramic bowl set because I like stuff and might have a slight hoarding problem but we don’t have time to go into that.

When I moved from my Hollywood apartment to my current place (not telling you where I live obviously) I was back to paying my rent through an online portal.

…For about three months.

My current building got onto Bilt for our rent almost immediately after I moved in. Also mostly a side note I’m not sure if this is a moving apartments on Bilt thing or because I broke my lease but on Bilt you have to email their customer support and ask them to remove the apartment from your account even if there is a new apartment asking for rent from your account. Fairly simple but incredibly annoying. And the first flag for how this would all tick me off later frankly.

Another 13 months at my new apartment when in 2024 I started hearing news stories about Bilt. Apparently they were partnered with Wells Fargo and they were pissed that Bilt was costing them money because card holders weren’t holding a balance. At the time my credit spending across all my cards was truly getting out of hand but I was still holding firm on only using the Bilt card for my rent. Around October I got a popup letting me know that I had to reapply for the NEW Bilt Wells Fargo card.

So I applied.

And I got denied.

I assumed it was my credit score but when I later got the letter with more information it was in fact because of my high credit utilization. So partly?

So my Bilt card was going to be shutting down at the end of December 2024. I got confirmation from my building that I would still be able to go back to paying my rent without the credit card through Bilt as I had at my old building way back when.

Funnily enough, Bilt reached out to me via a sponsorship portal to sponsor my Youtube channel. The amount was too low for what my team and I ask for, but I was willing to work with them at the time if the we could come closer to the minimum rate we typically ask for. I really did like using Bilt and I couldn’t exactly blame them for not liking my credit utilization. I do hate Wells Fargo but thats because one of their help support people mislead me when I was eighteen which later lead to my abuser stealing $500 from my account as a 19 year old college student working retail but that’s a long and upsetting story.

I told my manager I was willing to work with them if the rate came up and so long as I was able to disclose I was denied the card. This never went anywhere.

I started getting weird emails around November. About three of them. Saying that my card was compromised and they had stopped multiple transactions. The thing is I had dealt with this before on my own transactions with the Bilt card, and they had sent me a text to check on fraud charges. Emails came later. And the formatting looked weird. My card activity looked normal and the card was shutting down in a month anyway, so I ignored it until I got a piece of mail about the fraud charges. I called Bilt customer service to get confirmation on what the deal was.

The emails had in fact been real. Probably my card was scanned at a convention or restaurant and was they were trying to use my card in another country. The most logical choice was to just shut down the card early since there was no point in reissuing a card that was going to be deactivated in 12 days. I was told I was still responsible for the balance (duh) and that I would still have time to pay it off like normal even if the card was deactivated.

Then I was sick after Christmas for several days. Then my city caught on fire and I evacuated to my dad’s house.

Stressful but fine. I got texted my minimum owed like normal and opened the Bilt app to pay it. Except the balance wasn’t in the app like it had been for years. In fact the app now just gives me the chance to apply for the new card. No record of my three years of credit activity and charges, just my rent payment history in a separate tag.

Ok…fine…

Until I go to the website attatched to the text. Surely I can pay it that way. OH NO I can’t! The website is acting up. Only showed a blank white screen! So I try the phone number attached to the minimum payment text. And I can’t get through to a real person. Why? Because it is demanding my account number. Which is my card number. You know the card that was cancelled?

The card that was cancelled and therefore not in my wallet and was instead in my office of my apartment I had evacuated? That card?

At the time it was not looking like my apartment was going to burn, but the wind was still high and the Eaton Fire was still burning so Hermes and I were not going back yet. So I tried to find the card number anywhere on any apps or web-services, but nothing. I used the Bilt website customer support tab to try and get my account number or another method of payment.

And guess what? THEY PHYSICALLY COULD NOT SEE MY ACCOUNT NUMBER! FOR SECURITY REASONS!

Which yayyyy security but then we have incidents like this, where if the worst case scenario were to happen, my card would burn with my apartment. Surely there needs to be a “in case of emergency break glass and get account number” button.

What ended up happening is they had the credit card service provider call me directly. Now this did take another few days and made it so my card payment was technically late and had accrued more interest! Lucky me!

The good news is it was paid. I paid off one of my cards in full-because I had no choice-and that took a chunk out of my debt (about $3800) and also a chunk out of my credit score since it’s officially a closed account. But what’s another couple points when I had been at 90% utilization.

This is an issue that I feel also affected other “financial” and even “medical” companies in recent years. The company the users and consumers are dealing with and actually using is actually just a tech company and all other services are being dealt with via other providers with the front company being more of a middle man in the storefront. Which leads to customers eventually suffering the consequences when things go wrong.

We saw this last year with Yotta Bank, when their users had their funds frozen in their accounts. Yotta was the main app, but the funds were backed by FDIC insured Evolve Bank and Trust, but they claimed the lock had to do with their middle man Synapse Brokerage which actually managed the funds. I had actually been a user of Yotta for a few years but thankfully only had about twelve dollars in my account at the time. Some users had thousands locked. I was able to get comped for my twelve dollars a few months after the freeze and I hope by now every user has received their funds.

I know this is all over the place but this was a pretty stressful thing to deal with in an already stressful time. I understand the importance of security and I do appreciate the rules put in place, but there has to be something in place to help the user in case of the worst case scenario especially when finances are involved.