Problem

I am writing automated tests for my company's website using Java and Selenium. Right now I am writing tests that involve clicking on links, and verifying that the link leads to the correct place. We have a newsletter popup (from BounceExchange) that appears at very unpredictable times, and it's causing ElementClickInterceptedExceptions. This is the exception message:

org.openqa.selenium.ElementClickInterceptedException: element click intercepted: Element <li id="menu-item-78096" ... is not clickable at point (x, x). Other element would receive click <div class="bx-slab">...</div>

What I've Tried

Clicking with JavaScript

I have been clicking WebElements with driver.findElement(By...).click(), which I've read is the best way to click things when testing UI. I have tried doing a JavaScript click like this but that hasn't worked, and the page just hangs with the popup on screen.

Closing the Popup

This is the area where I have had the most success, but it still doesn't fully work. This is my click method:

public void click(By elementBy) {
        By bounceExchange = By.className("bx-slab");
        By bounceExchangeClose = By.className("bx-close");

        //close bouncex if its open
        if(elementExists(bounceExchange)) {
            WebElement bounceX = driver.findElement(bounceExchange);
            if(bounceX.isDisplayed()) {
                System.out.println("Closing bounce exchange");
                try {
                    driver.findElement(bounceExchangeClose).click();
                }
                catch(Exception e) {
                    //ignore
                }
            }
        }


        driver.findElement(elementBy).click();
    }

From looking at the HTML, I know that the close button on the popup has a class "bx-close". This method sometimes successfully closes the popup, but then link that is being tested is never clicked, and the test fails.

Pressing Escape

I have learned that pressing the escape key while the popup is on screen makes it go away. I have tried two ways to do this 1. Using Actions

Actions actions = new Actions(driver);
actions.keyDown(Keys.ESCAPE).build().perform();
actions.keyUp(Keys.ESCAPE).build().perform();

But this way was giving me an illegal argument error since the escape key is not a modifier key.

And I have tried WebDriver's sendKeys:

driver.findElement(By.tagName("html")).sendKeys(Keys.Escape);

This approach also did not work for me.

HTML of Popup

<div class="bx-slab">
  <div class="bx-align">
    <div class="bx-creative bx-creative-874700" id="bx-creative-874700">
      <div class="bx-wrap">
        <a id="bx-close-inside-874700" class="bx-close bx-close-link bx-close-inside" href="javascript:void(0)" data-click="close">
          <svg class="bx-close-xsvg" viewBox="240 240 20 20">..</svg>
        </a>
   ...
</div>

So my question is, what is a reliable way to close this unpredictable popup so I can stop getting ElementClickInterceptedExceptions?