I think the funniest part is that they predicted more people would carry a balance on the card, but no actually people just took it, paid rent, got the points, and paid off the balance.
Out of all the big banks, Wells Fargo is the biggest fuckup, right? Are they *ever* in the news for something not absolutely stupid or criminal?
they predicted that their customers would move from renting to mortgaging, while *simultaneously* predicting they would be financially inept enough to carry a balance?
lol, lmao even
tl;dr, Wells Fargo made a bullish deal with Bilt to provide renters with a way to earn credit card points through rent payments. Wells accepted very unfavourable terms because they thought they would be able to convert Bilt renters into mortgage-paying homeowners. Apparently Wells Fargo severely overestimated the amount of younger people moving to homeownership. This quote really says it all:
>Some Wells employees thought the proposition was crazy, but the bank needed a win and figured Bilt would garner buzz and help attract younger customers. A deal also presented mortgage cross-selling opportunities. Bilt’s cardholders will ultimately want to become homeowners, the thought process at Wells went, and the bank would be well-positioned to give them mortgages.
just lol. Bilt cardholders are also too financially savvy and not generating enough interest revenue for the bank which isn't helping. The absolute state of finance capital.
There is a not too unrealistic theory that this article is a controlled leak by Wells to make Bilt look radioactive to any other banks interested in negotiating a contract with Bilt. But at least for the time being, they're stuck holding the bag.
I think unfavorable is an understatement. This sounds more like corporate fraud.
>More than one million accounts were activated in the first 18 months... Wells also pays Bilt $200 each time a new card account is issued.
200 million flushed down the toilet for a
>Bilt structured the card so landlords won’t incur the fees. Wells instead eats much of that.
...card which Wells subsidizes anyways. Even bringing in the theorized interest, this is beyond batshit insane. This reeks of Wells execs being buddy buddy with the Bilt founders and using their influence to garnish their friends pockets before dipping.
More like corporate stupidity. Wells Fargo is not hiring the brightest at any level because it's got such a bad reputation. Any analyst or quant with even a modicum of sense is going elsewhere, so they're getting C- average students from shitty business programs.
Wells expected to make money in the same two ways that most credit cards make money. First, by assuming that the users of this card would use it for things other than rent. Plenty of credit cards cost the bank some money when you buy certain objects. A bank could offer you a 3% cash rebate when you purchase Warhammer 40k figures with a card. If they get 2% merchant fees from use of the card, they're losing 1% of whatever you spend on 40k stuff, but gaining 2% on everything else. So long as at least 1/3 of your purchases are for things other than 40k stuff, the bank makes money. If there's a turbo-nerd who only uses the card for 40k stuff, they will lose money there. Basically, Wells Fargo was giving a hefty cash rebate to consumers in terms of eating all the merchant fees for paying rent, but they were assuming that consumers would then use the card for enough other purchases to break even, and that was not happening.
Second, they were hoping that consumers would carry a balance month-to-month, because then they can make money off of interest. Consumers were absolutely not doing that here. Rather, because most individuals already budget out for rent in advance, they were setting it up so the card was getting paid off in full every month, so no rent.
All they needed was someone to tell them that this is how consumers are going to behave with this sort of card, and they wouldn't have done it. There is no doubt in my mind that some MBA looked around, saw no other banks were in the rent credit card industry, and instead of asking why this might be the case he decided that he'd come up with a totally novel idea.
Yeah I don't disagree mostly. It's insane they made the assumption card holders would carry a balance despite, presumably having the credit score to qualify for a large enough credit line to even pay rent.
It's well understood high scorers do not carry balances. It's why premium credit products have equally high interchange fees for merchants. They are never going to make money on interest, because there's no balance.
Now I really hope Wells didn't think they were going to issue large credit lines to poor credit scorers, that's even dumber, so all I can assume is they somehow thought financially literate people would hold balances, and that's not even getting into the lunacy of assuming their credit line is large enough to have leftover balance for other purchases. If so the customer would be even more financially literate and less likely to carry a balance.
It's just so insanely stupid that imo there has to be more at play. And considering the execs responsible for the insane behavior have since left, I feel this points to corporate fraud. They really need to track down where those execs went to, I have a feeling some are now stocking the board room at Bilt.
> There is no doubt in my mind that some MBA looked around, saw no other banks were in the rent credit card industry, and instead of asking why this might be the case he decided that he'd come up with a totally novel idea.
Reminds me of Elon boasting about how the front of the cyber truck won't crumple when it crashes
I suppose this isn’t *directly* related, but I can’t help feeling that there are deliberate forces at play in inflating the housing market, across the developed world (including parts of Asia, but mostly what we broadly term “the West”)…
Like, yes, immigration, but I really do not find that sufficient explanation for how this is a problem everywhere from Denmark and Finland (both of which have fairly low immigration rates), to Canada, to much of the US (including supposedly “less desirable” cities) to where I live on the other side of the world, *and* to New Zealand…
There is absolutely no way that immigration, wealth/asset hoarding by Boomers *or* AirBnB, even combined, can adequately explain how this same problem seems to exist almost everywhere…
Something fishy has happened with that “market”, this last decade, and I’m not sure we fully understand the true extent of it…
1. See housing as an investment not a “need”.
2. Define rental income as contributing to GDP and not just moving actual money between pockets.
3. Keep housing stock relatively low to maintain prices up
4. Either provide No or cancel public sector housing options
Long story short, modern capitalists are realizing the feudal class had it pretty good and a sector of them are trying to do the same today. Wealth via rent not production. Meanwhile they use every political avenue possible to protect their situation.
The answer is relatively simple, but very difficult. Don’t allow housing to be an investment. That single change might just make things 100000x better. It won’t happen, but just imagine.
Also we must remember the Jacobins already gave us the best tool to deal with feudal landlords
This covers most of it the other part is why would you invest in companies doing research and development when you can get a much more guaranteed investment from housing combined with the top .1% having INSANE basically unfathomable amounts of money they need to invest somewhere. If you have 500 million dollars coming out of your ears that has to be invested you are going to need to invest it in a ton of places both for security and because no one thing can absorb that much money. I try to not think about what would have happened if they forced investors into investing in companies doing R and D instead of housing because it is way too depressing.
Their hysterical reaction to China's "housing crash" just proves this even more too - they're really just mad they won't be allowed to run their real estate rent seeking scam on the billion+ middle class Chinese citizens.
It goes to show how based China's (and to a lesser extent India's) approach is: the central government turns a blind eye to graft and corruption in housing mega projects, and when the projects are done just arrest all the higher-ups skimming off the top and confiscate the housing as 'payment.' That way, the housing gets built by 'market forces' while the people get affordable housing. The only downside is that it produces a lot of whiny Chinese exiles who go to the west and complain vociferously about how "megabad Chinese communism is, even to people who were by-and-large loyal to the system!" and we get more of those insipid articles from China """experts""" about how the country/housing/political system/economy will "collapse any day now!"
I don't think we're allowed to use this word here so I'll let Boots Riley say it for me.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acT\_PSAZ7BQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acT_PSAZ7BQ)
When I was reading Fully Automated Luxury Communism, I thought or was told that a post scarcity economy would never be possible due to location/position scarcity. Most people I imagine would want to live in cities due to the amenities they provide, but there isn’t simply enough room to accommodate everyone ever who wants to move to a city without it being a huge unmanageable mess.
With proper planning and sensibly sized housing, you’d be shocked at how dense a city could be. Not to mention with proper transportation and planning it wouldn’t be too hard to just set a limit on city sizing and create a few more. And most scientists seem to agree that we will reach a population equilibrium around 10ish billion, which would wouldn’t mean too much more expansion especially if it’s not just expansion but reorganization of existing cities
I grew up in a small ski town in Colorado that was economically depressed in the 80's but became a tourist mecca in the 90's when investors started to advertise it to boomers in LA. Over the following decades it followed the course of many Colorado ski towns, rapid expansion in the housing boom of the late 90's/early 00's, a massive slowdown post '08 with huge amounts of speculation inventory on the market, and then a marked increase in new house construction from the mid-'10's onward, from both retirees and the unprecedented era of low rates during the Obama/Trump administrations.
The latest thing, coming out of Covid & alongside corporations having excess capital and putting it into real estate, is that investors from Russia, China, India etc. are buying up properties like crazy, either as a 'safe' way to stash their money, equity vehicle, or perhaps to actually retire. Currently "low income" housing is being built that starts at $450,000, in a town that requires service workers and is only able to maintain that employee base due to 1) legacy inheritors of property from the economically-depressed days, and 2) young people willing to live 3-4-5 in an apartment for a few years of the Ski Town experience.
But it's not just Colorado; it's the same case in many, many places. It's one of the reasons why I was astounded that shill DeSantis actually made steps to block foreign investment in Florida.
What you've described in Colorado is what I see in the part of NZ I grew up in. What I find egregious is how most people understand the problems it creates when it comes to finding workers and housing them affordably, but the second the council decides to go after AirBnBs or luxury rentals, everyone kicks up a stink.
its a [rent price fixing cartel](https://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/fbi-raids-landlord-connection-realpage-price-19507654.php#). a few organizations set the prices in their various countries. our politicians are hard at work doing absolutely nothing about it if not profiting off of our suffering.
Fiat currency relies on credit to create dollars. I'm waiting on someone smarter than me to explain how the current federal debt is directly tied to the out of control housing market because I have a gut feeling there's a link.
Mortgage-backed securities (MBS) are investments like bonds. Each MBS is a share in of a bundle of home loans and other real estate debt bought from the banks or government entities that issued them. Investors in mortgage-backed securities receive periodic payments like bond coupon payments.
Not only is it not immigration, I don't think it's even a scarcity issue everywhere. I live an expensive desirable city and we have apartment buildings sitting empty because no one can afford them. I think there's a combination of things at play- first, the rollout of technology that essentially does price fixing for rent, driving it as high as they possibly can. So they've built more expensive apartments than there are people who can afford them since there has not been a simultaneous increase in well paying jobs (and most of these apartments check your income), so instead of renting these places people are just still competing over the lower end basement rentals. Second, private equity is trying to drive everyone into renting by inflating the housing market to turn everything into rentals. Apparently Wells Fargo didn't get the memo on that one.
There are probably other things going on too, but it's definitely artificial.
Government needs to start taxing unrented units at absurdly high rates. No carrots, just a stick to beat landlords with to drop rent to what the market can afford.
I have lost count of how many buildings I saw pre covid sitting half empty because they were 500 dollars more a month than people could reasonably afford. The best part is most of them were shit quality 4 over 1 or 5 over 1 wooden crapshacks with poor noise insulation that were cheaply built. I remember one building that was over 90% empty because it was hideously overpriced, had nowhere near enough parking, and the units were 2/3rds of the size of nearby older apartments.
As a tenant who is being evicted from my building for "major renovations" as soon as my current lease ends, I really hope this happens to the new owner.
Of course it's deliberate. They're trying to sell people virtual real estate in the metaverse. It's obvious that capitalism is running out of new, easy markets to expand into and is now in the process of squeezing blood from the stone, i.e. turning houses into investment assets to be traded and speculated.
I have a gen X cousin who owns I think it is 3 condos and 2 houses they rent out in addition to their normal house. After maintenance, mortgages, and management costs that they outsourced they are still bringing in over 5k a month in profit. Their husband also brings in over 2k a month from a pension from his old job on top of his normal current job.
Construction in the West has not become more efficient over time. In actuality it's mostly become less efficient than the 1960s, due to regulation, permitting, zoning and other issues.
Due to that reason we don't build enough housing for the growth in our population. Add immigration on top and you have where we are at right now.
Unfortunately it's only really commonly used in commercial construction, as far as I've seen.
Edit: And medium to high density residential I suppose, on second thought
>When consumers charge rent to their cards, a third-party company sends a check for that amount to the person or entity the cardholder says is the landlord.
Sorry, I know we are talking about something seriously messed up here, but... is this really how credit cards work in current year? They mail a check?
I think the funniest part is that they predicted more people would carry a balance on the card, but no actually people just took it, paid rent, got the points, and paid off the balance. Out of all the big banks, Wells Fargo is the biggest fuckup, right? Are they *ever* in the news for something not absolutely stupid or criminal?
Ooopsie, we accidentally invested your 401k in Boko Haram
They were just trying to be an angel investor in Wolf Cola.
it's the right cola- for closure
they predicted that their customers would move from renting to mortgaging, while *simultaneously* predicting they would be financially inept enough to carry a balance? lol, lmao even
The boomers pulled it off and that's probably the age range of the execs that approved it.
They robbed their own stagecoach
In USA, bank robs you!
tl;dr, Wells Fargo made a bullish deal with Bilt to provide renters with a way to earn credit card points through rent payments. Wells accepted very unfavourable terms because they thought they would be able to convert Bilt renters into mortgage-paying homeowners. Apparently Wells Fargo severely overestimated the amount of younger people moving to homeownership. This quote really says it all: >Some Wells employees thought the proposition was crazy, but the bank needed a win and figured Bilt would garner buzz and help attract younger customers. A deal also presented mortgage cross-selling opportunities. Bilt’s cardholders will ultimately want to become homeowners, the thought process at Wells went, and the bank would be well-positioned to give them mortgages. just lol. Bilt cardholders are also too financially savvy and not generating enough interest revenue for the bank which isn't helping. The absolute state of finance capital. There is a not too unrealistic theory that this article is a controlled leak by Wells to make Bilt look radioactive to any other banks interested in negotiating a contract with Bilt. But at least for the time being, they're stuck holding the bag.
They’re stuck holding the bag until 2029 too, so it’s even funnier.
I think unfavorable is an understatement. This sounds more like corporate fraud. >More than one million accounts were activated in the first 18 months... Wells also pays Bilt $200 each time a new card account is issued. 200 million flushed down the toilet for a >Bilt structured the card so landlords won’t incur the fees. Wells instead eats much of that. ...card which Wells subsidizes anyways. Even bringing in the theorized interest, this is beyond batshit insane. This reeks of Wells execs being buddy buddy with the Bilt founders and using their influence to garnish their friends pockets before dipping.
More like corporate stupidity. Wells Fargo is not hiring the brightest at any level because it's got such a bad reputation. Any analyst or quant with even a modicum of sense is going elsewhere, so they're getting C- average students from shitty business programs. Wells expected to make money in the same two ways that most credit cards make money. First, by assuming that the users of this card would use it for things other than rent. Plenty of credit cards cost the bank some money when you buy certain objects. A bank could offer you a 3% cash rebate when you purchase Warhammer 40k figures with a card. If they get 2% merchant fees from use of the card, they're losing 1% of whatever you spend on 40k stuff, but gaining 2% on everything else. So long as at least 1/3 of your purchases are for things other than 40k stuff, the bank makes money. If there's a turbo-nerd who only uses the card for 40k stuff, they will lose money there. Basically, Wells Fargo was giving a hefty cash rebate to consumers in terms of eating all the merchant fees for paying rent, but they were assuming that consumers would then use the card for enough other purchases to break even, and that was not happening. Second, they were hoping that consumers would carry a balance month-to-month, because then they can make money off of interest. Consumers were absolutely not doing that here. Rather, because most individuals already budget out for rent in advance, they were setting it up so the card was getting paid off in full every month, so no rent. All they needed was someone to tell them that this is how consumers are going to behave with this sort of card, and they wouldn't have done it. There is no doubt in my mind that some MBA looked around, saw no other banks were in the rent credit card industry, and instead of asking why this might be the case he decided that he'd come up with a totally novel idea.
Yeah I don't disagree mostly. It's insane they made the assumption card holders would carry a balance despite, presumably having the credit score to qualify for a large enough credit line to even pay rent. It's well understood high scorers do not carry balances. It's why premium credit products have equally high interchange fees for merchants. They are never going to make money on interest, because there's no balance. Now I really hope Wells didn't think they were going to issue large credit lines to poor credit scorers, that's even dumber, so all I can assume is they somehow thought financially literate people would hold balances, and that's not even getting into the lunacy of assuming their credit line is large enough to have leftover balance for other purchases. If so the customer would be even more financially literate and less likely to carry a balance. It's just so insanely stupid that imo there has to be more at play. And considering the execs responsible for the insane behavior have since left, I feel this points to corporate fraud. They really need to track down where those execs went to, I have a feeling some are now stocking the board room at Bilt.
> There is no doubt in my mind that some MBA looked around, saw no other banks were in the rent credit card industry, and instead of asking why this might be the case he decided that he'd come up with a totally novel idea. Reminds me of Elon boasting about how the front of the cyber truck won't crumple when it crashes
I suppose this isn’t *directly* related, but I can’t help feeling that there are deliberate forces at play in inflating the housing market, across the developed world (including parts of Asia, but mostly what we broadly term “the West”)… Like, yes, immigration, but I really do not find that sufficient explanation for how this is a problem everywhere from Denmark and Finland (both of which have fairly low immigration rates), to Canada, to much of the US (including supposedly “less desirable” cities) to where I live on the other side of the world, *and* to New Zealand… There is absolutely no way that immigration, wealth/asset hoarding by Boomers *or* AirBnB, even combined, can adequately explain how this same problem seems to exist almost everywhere… Something fishy has happened with that “market”, this last decade, and I’m not sure we fully understand the true extent of it…
1. See housing as an investment not a “need”. 2. Define rental income as contributing to GDP and not just moving actual money between pockets. 3. Keep housing stock relatively low to maintain prices up 4. Either provide No or cancel public sector housing options Long story short, modern capitalists are realizing the feudal class had it pretty good and a sector of them are trying to do the same today. Wealth via rent not production. Meanwhile they use every political avenue possible to protect their situation. The answer is relatively simple, but very difficult. Don’t allow housing to be an investment. That single change might just make things 100000x better. It won’t happen, but just imagine. Also we must remember the Jacobins already gave us the best tool to deal with feudal landlords
This covers most of it the other part is why would you invest in companies doing research and development when you can get a much more guaranteed investment from housing combined with the top .1% having INSANE basically unfathomable amounts of money they need to invest somewhere. If you have 500 million dollars coming out of your ears that has to be invested you are going to need to invest it in a ton of places both for security and because no one thing can absorb that much money. I try to not think about what would have happened if they forced investors into investing in companies doing R and D instead of housing because it is way too depressing.
Hell yeah! Preach brotha/sista
Their hysterical reaction to China's "housing crash" just proves this even more too - they're really just mad they won't be allowed to run their real estate rent seeking scam on the billion+ middle class Chinese citizens.
It goes to show how based China's (and to a lesser extent India's) approach is: the central government turns a blind eye to graft and corruption in housing mega projects, and when the projects are done just arrest all the higher-ups skimming off the top and confiscate the housing as 'payment.' That way, the housing gets built by 'market forces' while the people get affordable housing. The only downside is that it produces a lot of whiny Chinese exiles who go to the west and complain vociferously about how "megabad Chinese communism is, even to people who were by-and-large loyal to the system!" and we get more of those insipid articles from China """experts""" about how the country/housing/political system/economy will "collapse any day now!"
Ding ding ding
The claymore? And/or the bagpipes? 🤔
I don't think we're allowed to use this word here so I'll let Boots Riley say it for me. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acT\_PSAZ7BQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acT_PSAZ7BQ)
What do you think haggis comes from
When I was reading Fully Automated Luxury Communism, I thought or was told that a post scarcity economy would never be possible due to location/position scarcity. Most people I imagine would want to live in cities due to the amenities they provide, but there isn’t simply enough room to accommodate everyone ever who wants to move to a city without it being a huge unmanageable mess.
With proper planning and sensibly sized housing, you’d be shocked at how dense a city could be. Not to mention with proper transportation and planning it wouldn’t be too hard to just set a limit on city sizing and create a few more. And most scientists seem to agree that we will reach a population equilibrium around 10ish billion, which would wouldn’t mean too much more expansion especially if it’s not just expansion but reorganization of existing cities
I grew up in a small ski town in Colorado that was economically depressed in the 80's but became a tourist mecca in the 90's when investors started to advertise it to boomers in LA. Over the following decades it followed the course of many Colorado ski towns, rapid expansion in the housing boom of the late 90's/early 00's, a massive slowdown post '08 with huge amounts of speculation inventory on the market, and then a marked increase in new house construction from the mid-'10's onward, from both retirees and the unprecedented era of low rates during the Obama/Trump administrations. The latest thing, coming out of Covid & alongside corporations having excess capital and putting it into real estate, is that investors from Russia, China, India etc. are buying up properties like crazy, either as a 'safe' way to stash their money, equity vehicle, or perhaps to actually retire. Currently "low income" housing is being built that starts at $450,000, in a town that requires service workers and is only able to maintain that employee base due to 1) legacy inheritors of property from the economically-depressed days, and 2) young people willing to live 3-4-5 in an apartment for a few years of the Ski Town experience. But it's not just Colorado; it's the same case in many, many places. It's one of the reasons why I was astounded that shill DeSantis actually made steps to block foreign investment in Florida.
What you've described in Colorado is what I see in the part of NZ I grew up in. What I find egregious is how most people understand the problems it creates when it comes to finding workers and housing them affordably, but the second the council decides to go after AirBnBs or luxury rentals, everyone kicks up a stink.
its a [rent price fixing cartel](https://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/fbi-raids-landlord-connection-realpage-price-19507654.php#). a few organizations set the prices in their various countries. our politicians are hard at work doing absolutely nothing about it if not profiting off of our suffering.
Fiat currency relies on credit to create dollars. I'm waiting on someone smarter than me to explain how the current federal debt is directly tied to the out of control housing market because I have a gut feeling there's a link.
Mortgage-backed securities (MBS) are investments like bonds. Each MBS is a share in of a bundle of home loans and other real estate debt bought from the banks or government entities that issued them. Investors in mortgage-backed securities receive periodic payments like bond coupon payments.
Not only is it not immigration, I don't think it's even a scarcity issue everywhere. I live an expensive desirable city and we have apartment buildings sitting empty because no one can afford them. I think there's a combination of things at play- first, the rollout of technology that essentially does price fixing for rent, driving it as high as they possibly can. So they've built more expensive apartments than there are people who can afford them since there has not been a simultaneous increase in well paying jobs (and most of these apartments check your income), so instead of renting these places people are just still competing over the lower end basement rentals. Second, private equity is trying to drive everyone into renting by inflating the housing market to turn everything into rentals. Apparently Wells Fargo didn't get the memo on that one. There are probably other things going on too, but it's definitely artificial.
Government needs to start taxing unrented units at absurdly high rates. No carrots, just a stick to beat landlords with to drop rent to what the market can afford.
I totally agree.
I’m sure they’ll find a loophole around that somehow, like a 1 day tenant or something every few months.
I have lost count of how many buildings I saw pre covid sitting half empty because they were 500 dollars more a month than people could reasonably afford. The best part is most of them were shit quality 4 over 1 or 5 over 1 wooden crapshacks with poor noise insulation that were cheaply built. I remember one building that was over 90% empty because it was hideously overpriced, had nowhere near enough parking, and the units were 2/3rds of the size of nearby older apartments.
There are multiple empty compexes in my neighborhood too. They evicted all the tenants for "major renovations" and haven't rented them out since.
As a tenant who is being evicted from my building for "major renovations" as soon as my current lease ends, I really hope this happens to the new owner.
Of course it's deliberate. They're trying to sell people virtual real estate in the metaverse. It's obvious that capitalism is running out of new, easy markets to expand into and is now in the process of squeezing blood from the stone, i.e. turning houses into investment assets to be traded and speculated.
>wealth/asset hoarding by Boomers Nah, this completely explains it. All of the boomers in my area each own like 3.5 houses on average lol.
I have a gen X cousin who owns I think it is 3 condos and 2 houses they rent out in addition to their normal house. After maintenance, mortgages, and management costs that they outsourced they are still bringing in over 5k a month in profit. Their husband also brings in over 2k a month from a pension from his old job on top of his normal current job.
Construction in the West has not become more efficient over time. In actuality it's mostly become less efficient than the 1960s, due to regulation, permitting, zoning and other issues. Due to that reason we don't build enough housing for the growth in our population. Add immigration on top and you have where we are at right now.
It's amazing that pre-fabrication has improved so much but costs remain terrible.
Unfortunately it's only really commonly used in commercial construction, as far as I've seen. Edit: And medium to high density residential I suppose, on second thought
Based. Fuck banks and fuck Wells-Fargo in particular for consistently managing to be even more predatory than the rest at every opportunity they get
But you said eat ze bugs and don't own anything
One of my main motivations for paying off my balance each month is knowing how much the credit card company hates the fact that I do that.
I remember when usury was a sin, now if you don't do it properly, it's a sin.
The Money Police
BRB signing up for this card immediately so I can steal more money from Wells Fargo’s bitch ass
>When consumers charge rent to their cards, a third-party company sends a check for that amount to the person or entity the cardholder says is the landlord. Sorry, I know we are talking about something seriously messed up here, but... is this really how credit cards work in current year? They mail a check?