Originally Posted by
djibouti
In my experience (which may not be universal), one only gets the miles once the statement hits. Once the statement hits, even a subsequent refund doesn't matter. The statement balance has to be paid in full or financing charges hit from the date of purchase, even with a now 0 balance. So if the OP at some point had $100,000 worth of purchases on a card at closing time (over one or two statements) as he must have in order to get the miles, this money at some point had to be paid or financing on $100k would have hit.
So the only way I can see this worked without thousands in fees is to close statement, get miles, refund, pay in full, close account then get refund check for outstanding negative balance on the card.
Assuming a $100K credit limit:
June 10, buy $100K of tickets, a few days before statement closing
June 15, statement closes, 200K miles posted a couple of days later
June 20, cancel tickets for refund
June 25 or so, refund shows up on credit card onine
Then cancel card
No interest, no need to pay for tickets, no need really to even pay the minimum payment. In my experience, AA refunds tickets fairly quickly.
(*Not* that I have ever done the above, and I would have assumed that Citi would catch up with it eventually having never heard of the "well known IT glitch" discussed above).