Originally Posted by
weaseltown
At the very least there's always the GC resale market. If you're uncomfortable with that, you could purchase GCs and donate them to the charity of your choice, taking the tax deduction. Or, if you have a family member that often uses (different airline), switch your annual credit to that airline and gift something cool to the family.
Just got the Aspire card and put in for my DL gift cards, no problems. I didn't even realize there was a resale market, but if people will buy fake status challenges on the bay, then of course, why not real gift cards? What put me over the edge on getting the card was that 1) it's the end of the year, so I can get the airline credit now and next month, 2) it's not so much trouble to redeem three gift cards per ticket, and 3) the Amex upgrade was literally about three clicks.
But certainly if I didn't use them myself, someone else in my family must need to buy airfare now and then, so I like your suggestions. As a datapoint, my experience has been buy gift card on day 1, see them post at Amex on day 3, reimbursement on day 5.