You've lost me on 'BLC', not sure what that means (probably me, long day!)
There might be different reward schemes for different workplaces.... ours has an employee purchase programme which gives a percentage reduction for certain purchases i.e., a link to the apple store which automatically discounts 10% off Apple Branded Accessories, 6% off Macbook and iPads, 2% off Apple Watch etc.... And it also had 7% off iTunes vouchers until recently.
When the iTunes Vouchers became 'Gift Cards' that went down to 4%.
I can purchase my gift card in advance and credit my apple account, but if I want the 10% off accessories I have to use the portal (which I log into via work) which takes me to the Apple Store where I can then apply my Gift Card to the already discounted price.
I think for me, this year will be a trial, I've only put £100 on the gift card, I know I can apply a gift card credit to my purchase currently, but in the franticness of an on-sale I don't want to risk it not coming up - I don't want to tie up £1500 in a gift card and then be faced with only a card payment option (technically another £1500).
To be fair I wouldn't risk using my reward scheme portal for the onsale, I'm strictly App and Web based (Safari, Chrome, Edge and Firefox) in my pursuit of release day delivery 😆