They may be exceptions, but I do not doubt that they occurred. It may also be that there is a variable in the purchase process that matters. In the case of Delta, gift cards purchased with a mobile device are no longer reimbursed, but purchases made with a PC are. There may be a similar variable that accounts for the different AA experience.
I thought about that, but with the flood of test buys those of us have made across the spectrum of cards (and platforms no doubt) you'd think that we'd have uncovered something. What is there- one, two claimed DPs of a reimbrusement? If anything it was a fluke in how a batch was processed, maybe someone bought during an IT upgrade and the transaction wasn't coded as a GC and it slipped through. All evidence now suggests this is nothing more than a once off occurence in a small window of time, not a larger trend.
Now I'm off to apply my $50 GC to an upcoming flight I was going to buy anyway...