I don't know what these people who claim to be successful said to the reps on the phone, but my experience is that it won't happen. I had actually FLOWN the segment that would advance me to Gold, a r/t JFK-CDG on Air France, but due to some fluke, the outbound never posted. Not only wouldn't CO advance my Gold Status, they wouldn't even accept my proof of travel to manually post the miles until a 30-day period elapsed. I called several times and got the same answer.
Fortunately, I didn't need the higher upgrade priority or companion upgrade priveliges on any of my flights during that 30-day wait period, and the extra gold elite bonus miles were in fact retroactively credited to flights taken subsequent to the true qualifying flight that had posted before the qualifying flight.