Originally Posted by
Auerbach
Data point: I recently signed my wife up for the Amex Gold Card. I selected her airline (Delta) the day the card came then purchased 2x $50 Delta GCs about 20 mins later. The credit posted just fine three days after purchase, so there's apparently no need to "wait a day after selection for good measure," as stated in the wiki.
That's not surprising, but the primary reason to wait for good measure is that it allows you to rule out other causes if something goes wrong. Some updates occur with overnight batch processing, so even though your experience indicates it may be instant in the case of airline selection, by giving it overnight, you can exclude "their system didn't yet know I had selected Delta when I placed my order" as the cause of a failed refund.
Originally Posted by
slbnoob
Update: DL literally made me wait 72 hours. I kept on trying to plugin the ecerts #s to use them but was kept getting denied. I checked various times. Then a few minutes after the 72 hour window, I was finally able to get them to work
Interesting. I could swear that I've used mine right away several times in the past. Could someone else chime in with a data point here, namely, if you purchase an eCert, see if you can use it right away or otherwise prior to the 72 hour mark? If this seems to be the rule, I'll note it in the Wiki because it would be best that people know they can't make use of this for last-minute purchase needs.