Are American Express Upgrade Offers Paused? It Appears They May Be
American Express upgrade offers are one of my favorite things about Amex. They are usually plentiful, and they normally offer you a welcome offer sized bonus without the hard pull. But the real juiciness that they offer is a chance to get a bonus on a card that you have already had. Normally welcome offers are limited to once per lifetime with Amex, outside of targeted offers, but upgrade offers don’t play by the same rules. People enjoy upgrade offers from American Express so much that they hold multiple Hilton cards to play the upgrade/downgrade game. It appears that American Express upgrade offers are paused though, at least during Covid-19. I am looking for more data points to confirm this so please share yours below.
Details
I had reader Stephen reach out to me, the same one with the American Express term change heads up, to tell me about his situation. He has been holding a no fee Hilton card for over a year now. He downgraded to it from his Surpass card in May of 2019 hoping for an upgrade offer in the future. These often come after the 12 month mark, but sometimes much sooner.
He has called Amex on 3 different occasions over these last 2-3 months to see if there were any upgrade offers for his account. He has had 3 different Amex reps, spread over three different months, say upgrade offers are on hold during the Covid-19 pandemic. American Express reps are not always the most knowledgeable and I have had them make up things on the spot. Having said that, when three different reps say something it gives it some weight for sure.
Just yesterday a member of our MtM Diamond Lounge was asking the same thing. Are American Express upgrade offers paused? He has not seen one on either his or his wife’s account in 4-5 months, which is unusual for him.
My Counter Data Point
I do have a counter data point to this, well somewhat. Back towards the end of May my wife received an upgrade offer for her EveryDay card to the EveryDay Preferred. She had just downgraded the EveryDay Preferred to the no fee EveryDay a few weeks earlier.
This falls into the beginning of the time frame when Stephen first started contacting Amex. And it is for a Membership Rewards card and not a co-branded card. This raises two questions:
- Were American Express upgrade offers paused at some point towards the end of May?
- Were only co-branded cards paused?
This is where you all come in. If you have a data point of getting an upgrade offer in May, June or July let us know in the comments. Share the date of the upgrade offer and the card it was for.
Final Thoughts
This would be a decent size blow for Amex related earning, especially with their recent reduction to 4 credit cards per person. Upgrade offers were a way to continue to rack up a lot of points without taking one of those precious 4 card spots.
Hopefully the reps were wrong, but I don’t think all three of them would give bad info. I also can not remember an upgrade offer being written about anywhere in the last few months. That adds to the legitimacy of this.
Please share any counter data points below.
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Was waiting almost 9 months for the Aspire upgrade with 150k offer, never came just the offer with no bonus points. In the last 2 months, that offer completely disappeared. Same exact situation for my wifes 2 no fee Hilton cards.
It does seem that Hilton has completely vanished from the upgrade game.
Thanks for the Data Points everyone. Seems like the ED to EDP is still going strong but others have dropped off some. Haven’t seen a Hilton data point here or in our FB group so maybe it is focused on Hilton co-branded cards.
My wife currently has a 40,000 points offer to upgrade her old Zync card to the Gold card.
Took upgrade offer from ED to EDP in early May. Seems like almost everyone was targeted.
Still getting emails about a BCE to BCP upgrade offer ($150 after $1k in 3m), most recent email was yesterday.
Had a Gold to Platinum upgrade offer mid-May. That disappeared as soon as I accepted a retention offer.
I don’t have any cobrand Amex cards.
I just took advantage of an upgrade offer for my Everyday to the Preferred – 25,000 MR for $2000 spend
When did this actually start? I had an upgrade offer showing on my card on my no-fee Hilton to Aspire up to the time I canceled it on May 31 (didn’t want to get tempted in upgrading and taking advantage of the bonus offers for grocery purchases for upgrading, which turned out to be a good decision). All my other cards have recently been downgraded or are less than a year old so no upgrade offers for those.
No one really knows for sure or if it is in fact the case. The first rep told him they paused them in early June.
My wife just received/accepted an offer to upgrade her Everyday to a Preferred (for 25k after $2k spend).
Haven’t seen one lately.
Any chance this only applies to people that have been playing the upgrade downgrade game and that AMEX is cracking down? It probably wouldn’t be hard to put a 1 upgrade/account lifetime limit on cards. Would also be in line with everything else AMEX has been doing lately.
It is possible – especially with Amex
I currently have a 25k point upgrade offer for ED>ED Preferred.
I received, and accepted, an upgrade from the regular Everyday card to the preferred in very late June. Don’t remember the exact date though, sorry.
Perfectly reasonable on the part of Amex. With many credit cards having limits reduced or canceled to limit overall exposure due to the current economic situation I’m not shocked they aren’t upgrading cards, likely with increased credit limits. Also this may be due to Hilton not authorizing any upgrade offers since why would they want to add points liability for someone that already has their card?
Given the economic environment stopping upgrade offers is perfectly reasonable and shouldn’t be a shock to anyone! You have to look at this from the larger business standpoint and not simply what it means to your points balance.
I haven’t had any upgrade offers in my account or my wife’s for over a month, maybe 2 months now. Before that, we had several offers showing that we didn’t take (Delta Blue upgrade offers, Amex Gold to Platinum offers, etc.) They have disappeared for us.