I will add 2 things:
1) Just because you get a pop-up on one card doesn’t mean you’ll get it on all amex cards. We’ve seen DPs of people who would got a pop on one card but applied for a different Amex successfully right after with no pop up.
2) Amex keeps track of all your apps, even the ones you cancel due to the pop-up. (I’d forgotten that. I will not be disclosing publicly how many times I applied/cancelled for a couple different Hilton cards in the last couple months but Amex knows
) What is unknown is if this has any affect on your relationship with Amex.
Btw, someone mentioned on r churning that once you get a Hilton pop-up they’ve never seen it go away for the duration of that specific Hilton campaign. No one had a DP to disprove so unless someone here does as far as the Hilton cards go if you get a pop-up I would consider that card during that campaign a loss, don’t bother to apply again. (This wasn’t necessarily the case on other cards.)
I saw that comment about how once you get the pop up for a card, it doesn’t go away on that card/family of cards for the duration of a specific campaign/offer. Maybe it’s Hilton-specific because DW was able to shake the pop up on and got the legacy SPG before it was discontinued. The only thing different over the 1.5-2 month period between the 1st application with pop up and 2nd application with no pop up was we brought the level of spend on DW’s existing Amex cards back up to MSR-period levels. The campaign/welcome offer on the legacy SPG was the same during that entire period.
@Albort and I chatted over some theories regarding the pop up a while back, and I think some of his findings supported another of
@gottalovepluto's theories:
gottalovepluto said:
Closed 1 Amex in April, have 4 open, spending about 1k-3k each on the two newer ones over the last 2 months but little to no spend on the others. I’ve been lucky so far in that I haven’t put any extra spend on my Amex’s over the last year and I’ve chugged along fine, guess my Amex luck has run out for now and I’m gonna have to spend some money with them after all...
ETA: actually maybe I won’t. There are a few pop-up denials today, maybe I’ll just wait until we get a flood of “omg the pop-up went away” DPs and try again then. My theory is Amex uses the pop-up denial to manage their bonus expenses (meaning it’s more about Amex than it is an individual’s actual history)so maybe I should put my money where my thoughts are...
https://www.disboards.com/threads/i...t-page-for-addl-details.3729982/post-60800058
This idea is related to
@gottalovepluto’s and
@Albort’s idea that even if you get a pop up on one card doesn’t mean you’ll get the pop up on all Amex cards. As
@gottalovepluto noted, there are folks who got a pop on one Amex card but then applied for a different Amex right after successfully with no pop up.
@Albort and some other sources seem to think that there’s an additional layer to this, and a pop up makes you “brand/co-brand locked.” That is, if you first get a pop up when you apply for a Hilton card, that pop up will extend to that card and all other cards in that co-brand’s family; but if you try immediately after for an Amex-only or another co-branded family’s card, you may not get the pop up.
If this theory of "brand/co-brand locked" is right, then maybe
@gottalovepluto's got something with her theory that Amex's algorithm may be using the pop up to manage bonus expenses, e.g., for a brand or co-brand family, particularly when certain campaigns/promoted welcome offers are running that are expected to attract increased applications. Amex doesn't want to pay out too much of any one points currency at a given time?
There's still some credence to the spend theory, because people who have high levels of spend on Amex cards never seem to get the pop up. So I'm wondering if the pop up acts like a bouncer at a club. Amex MR cards, Bonvoy cards, Hilton cards, Delta cards — they all have a room capacity that the pop up manages. Maybe the bouncer is even responsible for letting the "right" kind of people into the club. If you're a low roller and there's a line to get in, you get bounced. If you're a high spending VIP (and maybe being a longtime customer helps), you go straight on through pop up free. As for the applicant, if you get bounced from one club, you just try the next club?
Even if this theory works, I realize it’s not perfect because most of us consider our next cards carefully and to have a pop up lock us out of that card or it’s entire family of cards when we’re ready to apply is incredibly frustrating, even if we have another Amex card potentially available to us pop up free. And if we’re locked out of a limited time elevated offer that we really want by a pop up, it looks like our only hope is to spend our way out of that pop up, which may or may not work.