Not sure if it's a couple of months, that's debatable. My experience is airlines tend to process refundable fares within days and usually take no more than 2 weeks, and thus normally within the same CC billing cycle.

Must be a HKG practice and quite annoying if you ask me. I never had an airline calling me prior to my flight on a paid F or J ticket. At best, I'll get an e-mail telling me online check-in is available but aside from that, if CX does that, I'll get really annoyed. But then, like stated above, I have no plan of buying CX F tickets, no AONEX and no plain vanilla F either. So long as SQ, NH and JL exist and well; CX is very far back on my list. Besides, except SQ, CX is so much more expensive than most other carriers so on the price alone, it's a big enough turn off.

Doubtful, it's virtually impossible for them to trace back to me - not that I plan to do any such thing. But if I were, I'll make sure the circumstances and the people doing it cannot possibly bear any apperant connections to me (i.e. no same last name, not all from same place or same time or same credit card). And I won't do it when their F cabin is absolutely empty either, that's just unethical. But your point is well taken, a junior person doing this may get himself/herself burned / blacklisted fairly quickly.