I agree with this. I've had a couple of times flights booked with Amex travel that either I've had to cancel (with legitimate reason, not to game the system) or the airline canceled on me and sometimes it took a few months for the reversal process to play out but never almost a year like it did for the OP. I've detailed those scenarios in the thread about the 35% points back which was quoted somewhere above.

If the sole reason that Amex is giving for not being able to refund the points is that the account is closed, there is an option to ask them to reverse the re-charge of $9k and keep the points instead (which they are keeping anyway at this point). It may be too late for this option since the $9k was charged in August and may have already likely been paid but I know it's doable. My dad had 2 x J tickets worth about $6500 that were canceled on him by the airline over a year ago. No reschedule options were given at all and there was a cash refund issued to the account which was partially used against ongoing charges made to the card and the remaining refunded by check. After a few weeks (not months) Amex did exactly what was done to the OP - they charged $6500 to the card and refunded the points less the 35% back. At that point my dad did not want to cough up the $6500 so he called Amex and explained that he would prefer they keep the points they had refunded and to remove the charge from his account and they agreed to do that. Yes, it's a subpar value of redemption of 1 cpp which I told him was not very good but he stubbornly decided to do it anyway. In case of the OP it may be the better of the evils to do this at the 1 cpp value if at all still possible, because it seems that they can't get their points back anyway.