Do gift card purchases count for miles?
 

I have a large-ish dinner that I need to host next month - big enough that it should hit the $2,000 max monthly spend for the restaurant, which would be good for 10k miles (and 12,500 LPs since this would be an AA qualified dine and I'm in the 25% bonus period). The restaurant is actually quite good so I wouldn't be taking a hit on the dining experience just for miles and LPs.

The problem with my (otherwise excellent) plan is that the restaurant doesn't offer miles on Saturday, which is when I'm locked into hosting my dinner. If I were to go into the restaurant and buy a $2,000 (or whatever amount) gift certificate on a Wednesday would I get credit for the $2,000 gift certificate as a "dine". I could then use the gift certificate to pay for my meal on Saturday. Would that work? In essence, I'm trying to pay in advance for the meal so that my large-ish payment is processed on a day of the week that is mileage eligible.

Do you gurus know if that would work?

My experience, although well in the rear view mirror, is yes.

You need to take care that your card isn’t run on a separate pay portal and maybe I’d buy lunch with, “oh, while you’re at it would you add a $2,000 GC?” It might sound a little sketchy and don’t be surprised if you get 20 $100 gift cards. Might be more trouble than it’s worth, despite being a nice haul, and think about the transaction of handling the waitstaff 20-odd cards while your staff or clients cool their heels.

Finally, somewhere in these pages is a thread on horrible RN side effects and if the restaurant goes under right after you buy the cards…you will win.

Another idea, paying for a preset menu where everyone gets a choice of a number of items. You’d pay in advance on an earning day and only have the bar bill to settle day of.

It may depend on the card.

It's always safest to not have a gift card be the only purchase that counts toward a card credit.

So you may want to buy a $1990ish credit at that restaurant, and then make a small purchase somewhere else, to pull attention away from the gift card purchase.

And Dude, don’t be shy about circling back here to let us know how it went and to add to the hive knowledge.

Thanks everyone for the replies and the advice. I don’t have much to report back, unfortunately. I ended up picking a different restaurant that offered rewards on Saturday.

So, I did get a sizable haul of miles, but I didn’t try the gift card experiment. I felt like it was going to be too much trouble, especially once I found a suitable alternate restaurant that was still part of the rewards program.