Fairmont President's Club - Do FTers buy GC's at Fairmont to earn FFP/FFM on their CC's?

Tonight I've plunking around with getting the biggest return on my stay at the Fairmont Olympic in Seattle for the FT SeaDoo XI (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/communitybuzz/919881-seadoo-xi-august-14-16-2009-a.html) in Aug. when I thought of ordering Fairmont GC's online through the Canadian Air Miles shopping portal to earn one Air Miles for every CAD$20 spent. After walking through the order process, I quickly found the USD$250 GC ordered through Fairmont's online order website would cost me USD$39.99 S&H making it not worth doing so abandoned the idea.

However, I did find you could go into your friendly neighborhood Fairmont, which in my case is the wonderful Fairmont Hotel Macdonald here in YEG, and use your CC to buy Fairmont GC's, which would at least earn me the points on my CC. But my question is do others do this on a regular basis? Is this a common thing most FTers do? Do you charge thousands of dollars in branded hotel GC's to you CC to earn the points or miles whichever they may be or is it a step few bother to take? Has anyone encountered problems using Fairmont GC's? I'd be curious to hear some feedback on the subject.

Tonight I've plunking around with getting the biggest return on my stay at the Fairmont Olympic in Seattle for the FT SeaDoo XI (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/communitybuzz/919881-seadoo-xi-august-14-16-2009-a.html) in Aug. when I thought of ordering Fairmont GC's online through the Canadian Air Miles shopping portal to earn one Air Miles for every CAD$20 spent. After walking through the order process, I quickly found the USD$250 GC ordered through Fairmont's online order website would cost me USD$39.99 S&H making it not worth doing so abandoned the idea.

However, I did find you could go into your friendly neighborhood Fairmont, which in my case is the wonderful Fairmont Hotel Macdonald here in YEG, and use your CC to buy Fairmont GC's, which would at least earn me the points on my CC. But my question is do others do this on a regular basis? Is this a common thing most FTers do? Do you charge thousands of dollars in branded hotel GC's to you CC to earn the points or miles whichever they may be or is it a step few bother to take? Has anyone encountered problems using Fairmont GC's? I'd be curious to hear some feedback on the subject.

Can you please explain the difference in credit card points for buying gift cards on your credit card and using the gift cards at the hotel, vs. just using your credit card at the hotel?? If so, you are a Flyertalk genius. Otherwise, Im going to let you get away with calling this a Sunday night brain fart.
Also, I have used Fairmont GC's regularly with no problems!

Can you please explain the difference in credit card points for buying gift cards on your credit card and using the gift cards at the hotel, vs. just using your credit card at the hotel?? If so, you are a Flyertalk genius. Otherwise, Im going to let you get away with calling this a Sunday night brain fart.
Also, I have used Fairmont GC's regularly with no problems!

I was kicking around some ideas and thought rather than pay-as-you-go to your CC, why not charge enough GC's to your points/miles cards to time it so you could take advantage of some CC transfer bonuses.

For example my Canadian CC is a RBC Avion Visa which usually twice a year has a 50% transfer bonus to BA EC, though being around FT have heard of other similiar transfer specials. So my 10K of RBC CC points becomes 15K BA EC using this semi-annual transfer bonus. So why not prepay in essense for two years of Fairmont by buying, for example, $2K worth of GC's, convert the CC points to miles and get the bonus rather than spreading out the $2K over two years and getting a smaller impact. Does that make sense?

Now, I know employers may not like the idea and it would mean locking in with one hotel brand if you were to only buy that chain's GC's, though an upside could be that by buying in bulk you could hedge with currency conversion rates.

Anyway, it's just an idea. Myself as a strictly leisure traveller makes it harder to maximize the impact as $2K worth of GC's at Fairmont would probably last me 4-5 years, at least. Just trying to see things in a different light...

As CHF pointed out, a $50 spend on GC vs. $50 spend at the hotel itself should yield the same number of CC points.

I personally try to avoid GC's as I try to use my CC as much as possible. IMHO GC's are one of the greatest scams ever invented. I don't like the idea of dedicating funds to any retailers prior to making a purchase, unless they will give me a significant discount for doing so (the way Fairmont sometimes has 2nd night free promotions if you pay in full in advance).

In addition, CC offers insurance on purchases, you can cancel the card in the event of loss (I've misplaced GC's in the past), and offers other benefits that make me prefer the use of my credit card.

Yeah, I suppose looking at it again you could wait those two years having spent $2K and still convert that amount into 3K BA EC FFM using a transfer bonus from something like my Avion CC. Two years is a longer window and there of course would be no guarantee that promo or another of its kind would be around then.

Just trying to get the biggest bang for my buck and see things from perhaps a slightly different angle. :)

haha no problem!

Buyign 2 K in advance for 2 years doesn't make sense to me for the simple financial rule of "Money today is worth more than money tomorrow."

You could go invest 2 K at 4% for 2 years and turn it into 2163.32. 132 dollars would not be worth 2000 points to me.