Now, yes, if you combine 1 and 3 (aren't they the same?)

... and 5 and combine that with someone who rarely travels to somewhere where there's an iDine restaurant, then I guess occasionally buying the smallest gift certificate you can might make sense. But only as much sense, say, as buying some flowers from FTD (which also gives miles) that you don't need.

#4 makes no sense to me. If you need elite iDine status, it's only so that you can get to dines where you'll pay 10 cents a mile. Until you get there, you're paying about 33 cents a mile! Why in the world get random gift certficates from somewhere far across the country just to do that? If you don't have iDine restaurants near you (or near where you are in your travels oftens enough), why in the world do you care whether you're elite at iDine?!?

Again, if you can make use of the gift certificates, that's completely different.

I was just asking about gift cerficates you have no use for, and therefore you've done little else but pay for some miles at a very poor rate (in particular, at a much poorer rate than buying miles from the airline itself, which also counts as activity and therefore keeps your miles from expiring. But with rare exceptions, any iDine restaurant at a random place in the country that sells gift certificates online is going to give you gift certificates you have no use for, right? If you can't use iDine otherwise, I'm not clear on why iDine rather than, say, a mileage mall? If you can use iDine, why not actually dine and get some value out of it, or at least buy a local gift certificate (that you could at least give as a gift, if you don't want to use it yourself)?