ReneeMoss - I just tried a $980 (+$2 fee) purchase of gift cards from Holsten Methodist bank and the last screen gave me an error saying the charge didn't go through. So I called Citibank (I was using a Citibank AAdvantage Mastercard) and I was told that a $982 cash advance was trying to go through and that they denied it because I had my cash advance limit set to Zero.

Luckily, I set my cash advance set to Zero a few hours earlier just in case Holsten Methodist wasn't making it a purchase.

So, anybody else considering using this 'new method' - be very careful. It doesn't appear to be proven yet to work (at least, in my case, it didnt').