Yesterday I was testing links on our Best Offers page and I ran across something surprising. Many of the Amex personal card links brought up offers that were better than the standard public offer (in fact, most were at or near historic best offers!). Nick wrote about this phenomenon a week ago (see: I see better-than-advertised offers… [Targeted]), but in his case he found this in a browser that he had recently used to log into his Amex account. He speculated that Amex therefore knew who he was and had targeted him for these better offers. In my case, I usually log into my Amex account from Chrome, but I used Microsoft Edge to check our Best Offers links. Neither Chrome nor Firefox, for me, showed these better offers.
So, now we know that it’s still possible for some to get targeted for these better than advertised offers, but we don’t know the secret formula to increase your chances. Should you use the browser you usually use to log into Amex like Nick did? Should you use a browser that you don’t use to log into Amex like I did?
Here are the targeted offers I found
- SPG 30K points after $3K spend in 3 months
(current standard offer is 25K points after $3K spend) - Amex EveryDay 25K Membership Rewards points after $2K spend in 3 months
(current standard offer is 10K points after $1K spend) - Amex EveryDay Preferred 30K Membership Rewards points after $2K spend in 3 months
(current standard offer is 15K points after $1K spend) - Premier Rewards Gold 50K Membership Rewards points after $2K spend in 3 months
(current standard offer is 25K points after $2K spend) - Blue Cash Everyday $250 after $1K spend in 3 months
(current standard offer is $100 after $1K spend) - Blue Cash Preferred $250 after $1K spend in 3 months
(current standard offer is $150 after $1K spend)
Each of the above targeted offers are at or near the historic best offers for these products, so if you are targeted for these and want these cards, I’d recommend going for it. I did. I applied and was approved for the EveryDay card!
Important Info
- The above offers were targeted to me when I clicked through to each offer from our Best Offers page.
- There is no guarantee that you’ll find similar offers. However, if you do find offers better than those listed above, please let us know!
- All of the offers included the following language in their offer terms: “Welcome bonus offer not available to applicants who have or have had this product.” Amex does enforce this rule.
- Some of the better than advertised offers that I found were better than the ones that Nick found last week. So there does seem to be variety in what offers are targeted to different people (or, perhaps, the offers have changed in the past week).
- I only found better offers on consumer Amex cards. I was not targeted for improved offers on any business Amex cards. I don’t know whether the same will be true for others though.
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[…] want to find out how to make them reappear. Great Amex Offers combined with some other better-than-usual targeted offers has made it a strong month for […]
@Vg,
They certainly know which browser you’re using (unless you have intentionally spoofed it), so they can customize different behavior based on that. Of course, why they would want to is anyone’s guess, but so is much of the opaque logic of these companies. It’s also possible that the particular way a particular browser makes a request triggers a different behavior, either intended or not (if the latter, then it’s a bug or design flaw on their end).
[…] tip to Frequentmiler. Let us know which offers you were able to […]
Why does the browser choice matter…?
I’m not sure why. I’d guess that it has more to do with which cookies happen to be stored with the different browsers, but there could be other mysterious reasons. For example, recently with the Citi Reserve card (as it was almost no longer available) it was possible to sign up for the card through Firefox, but not through Chrome.
Scored the PRG 50K, had to use Chrome Incognito. Thanks!
I also saw a bunch of personal offers in my Amex account. I saw the same SPG offer but don’t recall the rest (but had a bunch of other ones).