Bilt Rewards, a company that offers points for rent payments, may have destroyed all customer goodwill with a single Reddit AMA. A significant program restructuring after losing Wells Fargo as a partner led to mass confusion among users, and the "ask me anything" session only made things worse.
Customers are now announcing boycotts of the company en masse.
What is Bilt?
In mid-January 2026, the company launched Bilt 2.0. Previously, it offered a simple program that allowed customers to earn points by paying rent with its cards. In late 2025, Bilt expanded this to mortgage payments.
As long as users made at least five other purchases per month with the card, they could get points for gift cards and airline miles with these housing payments. Wells Fargo gave credibility to the program in 2022 by investing in and partnering with Bilt.
This turned out to be a bad deal for the banking company, however. Wells Fargo pulled out in June 2025 after it started losing $10 million per month on the partnership. Later that month, Bilt announced its "2.0" restructuring.
The new version involves three different cards and membership tiers with varying benefits based on how much users want to pay in monthly fees. It also includes new rules and procedures to score points, which confused the heck out of customers.
Additionally, it didn't seem to work very well. Customer complaints about failed payments and zero response from the company other than an unhelpful chatbot piled up.
Bilt's Reddit AMA goes wrong
Bilt attempted to address this issue by sending General Manager of Travel Richard Kerr to Reddit. The AMA went poorly, as explained by TikToker and former customer @neeloytellsjokes.
Neeloy was part of a group of Bilt users who called themselves the Bilt Banana Boys. They would go out each month to buy a single banana five times to fulfill the program's requirements. Like other customers, they enjoyed the simplicity of it all, and were upset when that changed.
"I did math at a hedge fund and these rules are more complicated," said Neeloy.
According to the TikToker, Kerr got mad about all the complaints and difficulties explaining the new rules. He took his irritation to Instagram, posting a meme accusing the unhappy question-havers of cheating.
"Basement dwelling redditors trying to cheat their rent system," the meme labels the missiles and knives falling upon the soldier labeled "Kerr."
That was the wrong move. Bilt-using Redditors started threatening to quit the company altogether, and Kerr's apology post flopped hard. CEO Ankur Jain stepped in to try and fix it, but doesn't seem to have Neeloy's respect.
"He's a smart guy, because he was like, 'what's the easiest way to become a billionaire?'" said the TikToker. "That's right, become the son of a billionaire."
"He goes on Reddit to announce a 'simplification' and somehow makes it more complicated, and his defense is, 'we can't run a business off of the Banana Boys.'"
They may not be able to run a business at all after this. As of Monday, TikTok commenters continued to say they're quitting Bilt.
"I'm paying rent with Bilt and using the sign up bonus Bilt cash to cover the not-a-fee needed to earn points," wrote @ryanxieties. "Once that runs out, I'm cashing in my points and getting rid of the card."
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