Well, I learned something new last Thursday and I thought it may be useful for some of you that might (like I did) think you are referring a friend to earn some Bilt points – but won’t earn any.
In October 2022, they overhauled the referral program and stated you could earn up to 2,025,000 points (requiring 450 successful referrals).
Apparently, however, they changed the program again in February of 2024 – now limiting each account holder to 50 lifetime referrals maximum. So if you had been referring 20 people a year since they launched, you’re done forever.
I had no idea about this.
I chatted in to Bilt using the Platinum support chat (like anyone else would) and the Bilt Bot responded this way: “Hmm, that’s odd. According to our referral program, you can earn bonus points for up to 50 successful referrals in a year. For each successful referral, you get 2,500 points, and every 5th referral earns you an additional 10,000 points (read more).”
OK – so 50 in a year I thought. I’d only referred 6 people this year, all in January, so I pushed for a human rep.
The human rep stated that the Bilt Bot was wrong and the lifetime limit is now 50 referrals lifetime.
I started Googling and found conflicting information. For instance, CNN Underscored states you can earn up to 2 million points via referrals in an article updated just last month.
Finally, I found this post on Bilt’s own website from January 31, 2024 which mentioned the 50 lifetime referral limit, but does not call out that it was a change effective Feb 1st (which apparently it was).
I did ask the rep to escalate since he both could not tell me how many lost referrals I’d made but that was Thursday and as of today, I’ve not heard back.
Bottom line?
If you’ve made 50 lifetime referrals (which shows in your app), you can stop sending friends your link, since it will no longer track. My guess is that some big time influencers were actually earning the 2 million Bilt points and they wanted to cut that off – but that is pure speculation.
Of course, maybe I missed a formal announcement – I don’t know for sure – but if it was news to me I figure it may be news to you.
While it was disappointing to me on a few levels, it won’t stop my love for Bilt as I still enjoy the value proposition of both earning points on rent and the occasional blockbuster Rent Day transfer bonuses. And I maxed out my 2X earn on Rent Day yesterday as well…
Thoughts?
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