They can, it's called the Red Envelope event. When they recharge, they get some coupons they can send to their group mates.

Not really an issue, you can easily wait till people are offline before putting them up. If someone tells you right before it happens, you can be clicking right before it comes up and you'll be the first to get it. If you have good group members, you could also just ask that no one takes it. There are easy ways to get around not being able to send to specific people. I've done it a lot.