This is what burns me.
Before all this pop up nonsense, I think my spend was less than $1k to at most $2k per month across my Amex cards outside of MSR. Most of our spend was with Chase because their cards had much better bonus categories. With the death of Plastiq 3x and some improvements in category bonuses by Amex (aside from Amex basically coercing us to spend or be denied SUBs), I've been able to shift a lot of our spend over without feeling too much loss opportunity cost. In recent months, I'm regularly over (sometimes a lot over) $5k across my Amex cards. Bay Area cost of living is high, so spend is high and I've made a conscious effort to steer that towards Amex. So I don't know on what basis Amex would deny my BGR SUB other than number of cards I've opened (8 in the past 15 months, and only 1 closure that wasn't an issue for the 7 cards they approved me for afterward), self-referral, or a delay or glitch. Either of the first two grounds would piss me off because Amex has their phone reps literally pitching more cards to you when you want to apply for just one and telling you they would love for you to open more cards with Amex; and second, self-referrals are rampant so if they have an issue with my self-referral to the BGR, it's either by chance or because I "called the bank" to confirm the welcome offer was attached (to which a chat rep confirmed it was).
If I was paying a first year AF on the BGR, I would be boiling mad. But I'm not, so if I don't get the SUB then I'll still have gotten a 15k MR referral bonus, MRs on $5k spend (which could've gone toward another MSR that would've paid out), and the ability to make 2x 20k MR and another 15k MR referrals, which I'll be sure to do before I close this waste of plastic come November.
I've seen a DP involving a no-pop-up-denial, after which the churner got approved for several more Amex cards without the pop up and got the SUBs on the subsequent cards. So if I don't get the SUB on the BGR, I'll try not to look at it as a death knell with Amex. I'll be under 5/24 again next month, so my plans with Chase means I can't get another personal card with Amex or any other issuer for the next several months. So no churning Platinum flavors for me. And with the uncertainty of whether an Amex SUB will post or not, even if you don't get a pop up, I'm avoiding big SUBs (once per lifetime, you know?) with big (or really, any) AFs for the foreseeable future. That leaves a self-referral to the BBP sometime this year, which should make a good test case to see whether I've been permanently shunned by Amex.
My expenses are low so my spend is low.
Has the SPG Biz been open for over a year? That's my pet theory right now. I feel somewhat confirmed based on some AmEx reps citing having the SPG Biz is stopping the bonus on the personal (which isn't a rule, but I wouldn't put it past them adding it to this pop up) and they've only had that open for less than a year.
