I don't know if this fits best under the Chase or United forum, but I'll try here first...

If I already received a Quest statement credit for purchasing a flight, and then have to cancel and refund that ticket, does Chase take back that statement credit? (I would imagine so?) And does that mean I can purchase another alternate flight and get the credit applied to that purchase instead, or would the credit get automatically applied against any next-in-line already-made United purchase at the time they take back the initial credit for the cancelled ticket?

Here's the story.... I bought an award flight a month ago (first United purchase since I got the Quest card 11 months ago), and the ticket taxes/fees triggered the $125 annual Quest credit which showed up the same day on my Chase account making that flight effectively "free". A few days ago I found I could no longer take the trip and cancelled it. Because I paid with miles + the fee with dollars, and I wanted the miles redeposited, they had to refund the dollars as well back onto the Quest card (couldn't keep as United travel credit). As of now, a week later, my online statement still shows both the Quest $125 credit and the ticket refund.

The 2nd complicating factor, my Quest card anniversary is coming up this month, and I intend to cancel the Quest card due to unexpected lack of travel and use this whole year making the $250 fee not worth it to me. Yet, I still want to make sure to utilize the $125 credit from this past card year in some form. So, I was thinking of buying a future dummy ticket nearest to $125 with the Quest card, then later cancelling the flight, but keeping those funds in United as a UA travel credit to give me another year to use it up (not request a card refund), and hopefully retain the $125 Chase statement credit. Does that strategy work in general? (I'd rather not buy UA travel bank funds because I hear it can't be used to pay flight taxes and I almost only use award flights.)

But, with my weird refund/credit situation, if I now buy the dummy reservation while the originally applied $125 credit from the cancelled ticket is still sitting on my Chase statement, will I ever actually get the Quest annual credit for that dummy ticket purchase? Or am I just locking into unnecessary UA travel credit, if Chase either never claws back the original $125 credit, or does so only after I close my Quest card and they thereby never reapply the statement credit? And when would that all get sorted out, at the next statement close date, or sooner? Hopefully it's before I need to cancel my Quest card to avoid the next year's $250 fee.

Please advise on the best strategy here. Thanks.