That's good to know! I guess they refund if it's administratively closed or closed out for some reason other than an explicilt approval or denial?
It's interesting. Other than by naturalization, there's no reason to think that staying in HK for 7 or more years would make a difference here (at least that I know of, under the way ImmD currently interprets the rules).
Do you know what documentation you were missing? If you do it in advance, it shouldn't be hard to obtain, even though it may take a little time....