Blackfox

Say you've spent $5,000 in 2018 on your Delta card up until October, and you buy a F ticket at $20,000 in November 2018 for a flight in July 2019.
You get the MQD waiver and assuming you have the MQMs you receive your status for 2019.
So far, so good.
Now in June 2019 you cancel the ticket and get a full refund.
What happens with your 2019 status???

DLATL777

It actually doesn't quite work that way.

AMEX doesn't credit your AMEX account until account close. At that point, the payment is due. You would actually have to pay that bill for the credit. That means, you actually spent that MONEY even if you didn't take that flight.

If in June 2019 you cancel that ticket, the refund will be processed to the card as a negative balance, but AMEX will not email you a check for that amount (I believe unless you close your account completely-which would a question I do not know the answer to). Hence regardless, you still are out that Money-AMEX doesnt care on what you spent it on.

Bowgie

What happens is that Delta claws back your status, and probably bans you from Skymiles for consuming one-half year of status that you were not entitled to.

This is a better option:

Prepay $20,000 of your current-year federal income taxes in December. Use a credit card services that can process the transaction for a "convenience fee." The lowest fee is a shade under 2%. Collect 20,000 redeemable Skymiles and your MQD waiver. File your income taxes as soon as possible so that you can use the refund to pay off the Amex bill. You'll probably have to carry the $20,000 for a month or two until the refund arrives.

FSUnole03

jdrtravel

I don't know about Amex's policies, but I once accidentally over-paid a visa card and was sent a check upon request. I was not, however, attempting to commit fraud to maintain airline status, it was just an honest mistake.

StayingHomeIsBetter

In the spirit of the holidays, I am going to assume that the OP was not seeking advice on how to perpetrate a fraud.

In a more general sense, though, is FT increasingly becoming the refuge of those for whom attaining or maintaining status is more important than ethics or maintaining a sense of true self-worth?

Perhaps, this a is just a manifestation of the end-of-year desperation as others come here to seek counsel on how to get around the rules.

SpinzCity

Overpaying the card won't help anyways - - it's eligible purchases that count, not total payments (and with the Amex waiver, your annual fee does not count toward eligible purchases either).

MSPeconomist

DL doesn't have to prove anything if it believes that one has acted improperly regarding its FF program.

Moreover, purchasing a sudden $20,000 ticket if that isn't part of one's usual travel pattern and then refunding it after the new year and new FF program year starts is likely to raise red flags. AmEx might also raise questions about approving the charge if this is far from the cardholder's usual spending pattern, even assuming that it doesn't exceed the line of credit associated with the card.

jdrtravel

Yes, I am aware. I was responding to a previous post that suggested that OP might not get OP's money back after having paid the Amex bill and then 6 months later cancelling the ticket. I was offering a counter data point from a time when I had accidentally over paid my credit card and was later sent a check. I was not commenting on this applying towards any kind of rewards program.

jdrtravel

You are more generous than I. I kind of doubt that anyone who could and would actually pay $20k for an airplane ticket cares at all about airline status. If you are spending that much then I presume you are always flying first class, in which case status really does not matter.

nomiiiii

While others discuss the ethics of it, to answer OPs question I think this will most likely work in getting them status without any clawbacks (assuming amex-delta system is similar to other card-status benefit systems). Ofcourse, OP should be ready for the risk of a complete shutdown from delta etc, but I'm assuming that's a risk OP is willing to take.

I did not do this with Amex/Delta, and will not reveal which card-status combo this worked with, but the general concept worked (basically I had to cancel a transaction which technically should bump me down in status, but it did not). Note that this does mean tying up your money for a few months.

TerryK

Ethics aside OP's proposal should work..
Issues to consider:
1) You need to pay your Amex bill and float $20K for awhile.
2) You are effectively borrowing against 2019 to pay for 2018. You will need $45K to reach MQD waiver for 2019.
3) $20K DL ticket refund will go to manual review. Some agent may question why this kind of refund and review your FFP.
4) Amex allows refund of credit balance by sending you a check after statement closing. Requests are reviewed manually and they may review your Amex account for a $20K refund.

I don't see why this will not work for a $1K-$2K ticket. But $20K is a little extreme and may draw unwanted attention.

xliioper

I think I can confirm point number 2 above as it's possible to have a negative year-to-date spend amount. In my case, I was going for the second Reserve MQM Boost and made a $10K college tuition payment for my son at the end of last December. This was after my December Amex statement closed and it pushed me to $61K spend for the year. In January, my son received a performance based $5K scholarship grant and the college posted a $5K statement credit back to my Amex. This was during the same statement period and I wondered if Amex would still post the second 15K MQM boost as I thought they might correlate the two transactions (which would have pushed me back under $60K spend for 2016). I ended up still getting the second MQM boost, however my January Amex statement showed a negative year-to-date spend of about $3500 for 2017 (I had made about $1500 in other purchases in January before the statement close).

SteveinA2

The OP is correct you have historically been able do this.

Or you used to be able to buy 10 Fully refundable First class RT's for $2000 each and cancel however many you need to each month in 2018 to cover your bill.

That being said Amex are tightening up on this type of "push forward spend" and have set up a new department to watch for it. They go by a 3 letter acronym that I can't recall at this time.

Blackfox

Thanks guys,
I never came back on this topic but it is interesting anyway for desperate situations. I usually don't even need the waiver since I spend quite a lot of money on tickets, but there are some years here and there where I might not hit the target and could use some creativity
Again, this was all theoretical, I'm not going to have that issue in 2018