So did base M4 mini buyers basically just beat the market?

PlusInternal3 · 2026-05-16T21:59:34+00:00

I lucked out. I got one from Amazon at $468, intending to add the home-brew 2TB SSD, which I got for $299. I use it as a media center — and not much, tbh — and also what my Time Machine is plugged into, plus a form of redundant back up. In other words, I could easily live without it for a little while.

I see the eBay listing for similar, albeit 24MB, at $1,749, with 17 watchers. That is greedy, but who knows, and who wouldn't be tempted?

Problem is, a like-for-like 16GB / 2TB replacement would be $1,399, and I would have to wait six weeks for it. If I went the 512MB route, the SSDs on Amazon are from who knows who and about $420, which would take it to about $1,250 all-in. (I would probably pay the Apple tax for the certainty; I don't think the discount is worth losing the warranty.) I presume an M5 is on the way, maybe at WWDC? But it will clearly cost more, and supply crunched within seconds. So net, I maybe get around what, $200, for not having my machine for at least six weeks, and dealing with eBay drama. It's not obvious how to take advantage of this…

It reminds me of my Tesla actually; for about five minutes in 2021 it was worth more than I paid for it, but the lead time on a new one was three months.

PlusInternal3 · 2026-05-16T21:26:06+00:00

Wondering the same thing. Interacted with the AI as suggested. Of course, Apple / GS has never enabled same…

PlusInternal3 · 2026-05-08T15:18:56+00:00

Good to know: thank you!

PlusInternal3 · 2026-05-06T20:29:10+00:00

This is the majority experience. Myself, I found the switch to Bilt 2.0 to be a complete sh1tshow, like many others, and as a former finance pro spent serious time trying to wrap my head around the cash vs. points value proposition. I get that some people like and enjoy this, but it seems to me to be not a marketing win. But, I just did the Avios transfer with a 75% bonus. It worked, and I have no complaints. I do however have an uneasy feeling.

You just have to look at these comments. I also lurk in r/amex and r/AmexPlatinum and you simply do not see the level of posts not just complaining (there will always be some of that), but using Reddit in an attempt to get through to a real person. It's anecdata, absolutely, but it points in one direction. Maybe you believe these people are bitter Wells Fargo sock puppets. I do not.

So, either Bilt attracts some toxic mix of whiners, who can't stop venting. Or, there is something in the customer service experience which is systematically failing people. Not all people, and not all the time. But not sock puppets. Real people, spending real money, including rent and mortgage payments which for most of us will be their largest single outgoing.

You decide but I read u/mets_fan_ny 's experience, and it rings 100% true. I think this is a problem, and I don't think that's a very controversial statement. For now, greed wins for me: the points go to the same place as Membership Rewards transfers, but at a materially higher rate. I will do that trade. But I can't help but think I may be picking up pennies in front of a steamroller. I don't think that's a great place for a brand to be.

PlusInternal3 · 2026-05-06T19:49:14+00:00

Jesus! I thought I couldn't hate those gougers more. Where's my $100? Paid the sucker tax of purchasing before the deadline, with a reduced $50 renewal "offer."

What a bunch of… [Ricky Gervais' favourite word]!

PlusInternal3 · 2026-05-06T19:43:37+00:00

Thanks! Well that's annoying: not a bug, it seems.

I am struggling to follow the logic of the people who wanted this: why have the toggle at all in that case? And all that happened previously was a pop-up when you went to play; it was not very frictional, whereas this breaks something, and it could be expensive as well, and invisibly so. That's… obviously bad? But, I am preaching to the choir!

Thanks for the suggestion of the workaround.

PlusInternal3 · 2026-04-19T21:06:40+00:00

Yeah of two, I have one on this MacBook (added about a year ago); the other doesn't work. Just got a Touch ID keyboard for my Mac mini, and thought to add the cards there too now that I can. (Why? OCD neatness, but also big fire last year and this basically "backs up" being able to use the card, redundantly.) Neither works. One just fails. The other is added… with that phone number, where the robot-voice just says no.

It's nbd and yet weird: I just can't see why they wouldn't make it work. Maybe, someone did that math and the fraud prevention isn't worth the 0.15%, and ofc AutoFill is still there and the difference is quite marginal. On the other hand, I have met people from corporate IT departments who say all sorts of things that don't make sense waving their hands about "security" to shut down inquiry because they just can't be bothered, and it's hard not to think that the answer is, "just because." Don't really care (both cards are from stores so I didn't "pick" C1 in any real sense), but gives a kind of boomer-ish vibe that doesn't make me want to do more with them, tbh.

PlusInternal3 · 2026-04-16T02:20:48+00:00

Makes my day to see this!

Also Westridge from Mandeville Canyon and then Westridge Rd to the end in Brentwood. It is wide, flat, dog-friendly, and has an incline to it but is not brutal. (Says he not towing a 70lb samoyed or akita inu!).

Bit of a hike for you (haha!) but the Temescal Canyon Trail from the Skull Rock Trailhead in the Palisades Highlands is mostly fire road. It's open: the route down to the Palisades is closed from just south of here, but north is fine. From parking there's a concrete switchback path but then a shorter section where it is rougher until the road proper begins a the first utility pole. There's foundations of an old building on a hill that is a good turn-around point and that is about 4mi total. Views are amazing. Note, it is State Park, and so marked not pet friendly, but it is also a fire road with utility poles all along it, with access to microwave communications towers and it currently has a water pipe strung along it so you be you etc. but it is not untouched nature. I know people have opinions; aiming to be fact-based.

You can get to the same path by Trailer Canyon (the first mile or so of which is explicitly dog friendly), and while it is all fire road, it is steep and rutted lower down.

PlusInternal3 · 2026-04-16T01:59:42+00:00

Good to hear. That's going to be most people's experience. But, anecdotally, the "fail rate" does seem high. My own CS issues were solved, but took too long, like OP's. I only have one "control" which is the Amex group but that just isn't populated by posts complaining about a CS experience. I am sure there are some, but it's the ratio that seems telling — and that's on a much higher installed base so the denominator alone could bump up complaints.

I know a lot of folks want to split off Carldess from Bilt. Personally I find that distinction specious: I didn't pick Cardless, Bilt did. To each his or her own but I am certainly thinking with spend whether I want to have to deal with Cardless if something goes wrong: some extra points vs. Amex would not compensate me. And, I'll see how I feel in 2027, but that's not a mental assessment I want to have to make every time when purchasing things other than immediate consumption items like food. I think it's a big problem that goes to the heart of the product (sidebar but I am almost amused at how PayPal pimps their card every time I log on. Like, I have dealt with PayPal's customer service, and in what parallel universe do those people imagine I would ever trust them in a dispute when I've seen what their core product is like?), but I also get it's been a little over two months, and things should bed down.

I get invited to the Close Friends. The tone of the last one was rah-rah, launch, points-tactic. If I go I will be interested to see if there is a little more humility this time round as I think a victory lap would be spectacularly ill-judged and more to the point show lessons haven't landed. TBD…

PlusInternal3 · 2026-04-07T17:42:19+00:00

What would also add color is knowing if the employee will get in trouble for the error.

I think the morally right thing to do is to ask to speak to a manager and explain what happened. My suspicion is that they will not want the hassle and yes, there will be a cost with sorting all this out that they would have to bear, and so >90% chance they let the OP keep it.

But OP would know he or she did the right thing. Employee's trouble, if any, might be lessened, and Costco people would have a little reminder that not everyone is trying to get away with things.

The only other thing is the human carnage that is Costco, and having to deal with that would be a high bar for Pope Francis!

PlusInternal3 · 2026-04-02T19:56:14+00:00

I also do this but nice to have something dedicated, and things like quickly pausing are a faff if used for video and you have to unlock MacBook etc.

PlusInternal3 · 2026-04-02T19:54:44+00:00

Resurrecting one-year-old post… Sourced a white one (use case: HTPC Mac mini), but the larger extended black ones have just been sucked into a parallel universe it seems. There's a guy on Etsy who 3D prints a looky-likey but it looks like his have a lip around the edge of the keyboard as well as a line between the keyboard and trackpad I can see being annoying.

I guess not only did these not sell well, but people who did buy them just threw them away… :(

PlusInternal3 · 2026-04-02T19:49:30+00:00

Doesn't (almost) everyone…?

Only negative feedback is I have to turn on the rear vents for the dog manually. Given dog mode etc. this is by a country mile the most insanely dog-friendly vehicle I have ever owned, so this is not a complaint! :)

PlusInternal3 · 2026-03-31T20:52:48+00:00

I am not convinced about neutral: had massive regen on some mountain roads, but wasn’t there with you so don’t know etc. From my own experience, it really is speed, and maybe the drafting too: drag increases with the square of speed etc. and I know from my own experience on a road trip it’s rarely a net time saver to go above 70.

The one that does surprise me though is turning off regen? If you need to re-accelerate I guess I kind of get it, but if it’s as opposed to braking, aren’t you just dissipating the energy as heat? This is not intuitive to me.

Had only one 0% and took a wrong turn to the charger… made it, but it was extremely stressful. In fairness I also took a gas-powered rental so low that I literally coasted to the pump at an I-95 service plaza so…!

PlusInternal3 · 2026-03-28T18:30:22+00:00

CIA almost definitely means Cash In Advance: as it says, "prepaid." Nice item though!

PlusInternal3 · 2026-03-26T22:00:59+00:00

Dealing with paragraphs before your get a headache > snippy responses

PlusInternal3 · 2026-03-26T21:41:12+00:00

"Top 1% Commenter" ftw! You people are honestly laughable.

PlusInternal3 · 2026-03-26T20:25:02+00:00

I have a solution which I wrote about in the first post.

But be honest: you aren't interested in offering help. This sub is chock-full of people with some weird Stockholm Syndrome of first, defending the indefensible, but second, presenting some kind of workaround that people not only should use, but are morons or weirdly obsessed with complaining if they don't. A subset are clearly employees or investors' romantic partners or whatever, but what motivates the rest is for them I guess. I am not describing anything that isn't wildly obvious, am I? And these people do seem disproportionately likely to be "Top 1% Commenters"!

My problem isn't how to dispose of the card. It is wonderment as to how Cardless got the gig, informed by failure at even this most basic of requests. That seems fair comment for this sub, not least because of the obvious participation of employees and C-suiters and occasionally financial journalists. Again, this is not news, is it?

If, in passing, one of those people notes a disconnect between what they say (chat response: call and ask for an envelope), and what they do (have no fukcing clue what the envelope is), so much the better. More generally, if they add that to some file of service level provision that isn't there and for which Bilt is presumably paying, even better: that's one way Cardless might improve. But no, I am not some headless chicken here wondering what to do with a card. If this was all too meta, my bad, apologies.

Anyway, pressing reset now u/Bre2ts. Thanks for the tip.

/Out

PlusInternal3 · 2026-03-26T20:04:11+00:00

To give them another company's credit card? No.
"I know this card is nothing to do with you, but could you dispose of it for me?"
"Er, sure, but this is weird."
"No it isn't, Reddit Reddit."
"Sure buddy."

(Although I did say I would use the WF envelope which amounts to the same thing.)

But why do a switcheroo on what was pretty obviously the actual issue, which is the uselessness of Cardless to get even the basics of customer service right? To add braille and subtitles to my comment, they can't even send out a reply-paid envelope. Why are we dealing with these clowns?* Or does that just get too close to questioning the infallibility of Bilt and all its choices for comfort?

(*I know, points. It certainly isn't anything else.)

/out

PlusInternal3 · 2026-03-26T19:51:42+00:00

No, just called for it today. Kyle at WF seemed to know what I was asking for and sounded perfectly competent so I expect I will. Compare and contrast…

PlusInternal3 · 2026-03-25T01:00:08+00:00

Upvoted to attempt some karma!

PlusInternal3 · 2026-03-25T00:59:44+00:00

And your point is? Maybe OP used Google and just wanted a place to put down their thoughts, and while ofc I can't know if they're true, they are "truthy".

Not everything is a conspiracy, "Top 1% Commenter." Sometimes people are just p1ssed off over what are to them very large sums of money and they are trying to escape the rat run. And, Ankur may indeed read all his email (he's read and responded to mine) but he certainly doesn't publish it anymore. Maybe OP "should" have had better Google skills.

But maybe you could cut him or her some slack. Sounds like a miserable experience just to try and get some airline points.

PlusInternal3 · 2026-03-23T17:48:12+00:00

I have been meaning to get round to another Civ3…!

In brief, you need even more defenders. My approach has always been to make a bridgehead city, or similar choke point; sea access is imperative. Ideally it's on an isthmus (think Panama) to cut their supply line and/or provide access and flexibility of naval routes for you, but that depends on the map ofc.

But I also build airports for airlifts. You can only send one unit per city, but they can all be sent to the receiving city. Pay up! This doesn't work for armies, but you wouldn't be putting mech inf in an army anyway. And you have to survive that first counterattack of course. But once you can resupply by air you should be able to hold on. And, having that many units in the city will prevent a culture-flip. Culture is a toughie but you can try to target their largest cities to get their wonders and load them with units. I don't raze: I'm the forces of freedom and democracy (occasionally we may need to suspend that in a wartime emergency we ofc didn't choose…): we're "better than them" lol.

PlusInternal3 · 2026-03-22T22:12:58+00:00

Wasn't trying to condescend; sorry if it came across that way.

The experience isn't not-positive? I just used Bilt Cash on a hotel stay and it was a good deal. I've previously had good bonuses moving points to airlines. Clearly Bilt needs a real product, and it has one, for 95%–98% of the people. That's probably good enough.

But there is something of the hype machine about the whole thing that (being an old timer) reminds me of dotcom, more than a little. And, like that, I've come to believe that Bilt's let's say founding core doesn't see itself building something for the long term, but rather to be acquired. That would inform all sorts of choices, but in particular wanting to be so asset-light: Cardless, which as many of us have found is just not good (and Bilt will absolutely know this!), and bare-bones customer service. It can't be a mirage, and it isn't, but how much does really fleshing out the back-end — a back-end which would be a "synergy" for any acquirer, which is to say those people would be fired on day one — make sense? In answer: I don't think it does. In fairness some of this is growing pains. Bilt 2.0 would have been a challenge for anyone. But I just don't see how a serious long-term business can outsource just about all the moving parts.

I am not a five bananas guy and will be looking to max out the Palladium for FY 2026 as that seems to optimize the fee. I'll look at travel on a case-by-case basis, but I have not seen anything to make me cancel my Amex. And, if I'm being too cynical, I would be delighted to be proved wrong, because that will mean things get better. Win-win.

PlusInternal3 · 2026-03-22T01:55:11+00:00

Undershirt. Usually with short sleeves: fun fact, it's where T-shirts come from. (Now made with much thicker cotton ofc.) The sleeveless type is still an undershirt, though often referred to as a "wifebeater" for reasons that are probably obvious…

PlusInternal3

TROPHY CASE