Thanks Dave and awpeters for the comments.

The reason I prefer not to get into the credit card chargeback situation is my last experience with that beast:

I had booked a car rental from a UK online agent that was prepaid but had a no fee cancellation if made more than 72hrs in advance. I cancelled online 4 days in advance but a 3 day cancellation fee (about $AU170) was withheld from the refund. When the car rental agency didn't refund the cancellation fee (didn't even respond to my emails) I disputed the charge but the Commonwealth Bank said that as I had agreed to the initial charge, then the question of the validity of the cancellation fee was something that I would have to pursue through the relevant state Consumer Affairs Department - great advice when I was in Australia and the merchant in the UK. What really p"ssed me off was that the bank had asked me to provide copies of the cancellation policy and proof that I had cancelled in accordance with that policy but then decided not to actually consider any of the information that they had requested but just to reject the dispute.

Back on topic though, I emailed AA Customer Service and received a reply within 24hrs apologizing and saying that they had emailed the details to the Manager of the Refunds Department. 5 hours later (coincidence I would think} I received a response from refunds to my 1st online message that I sent 2 weeks previously and Refunds said that the 6 week old request had not yet been processed.
About 24hrs later (due to Customer Service's email I'm sure) the status of the ticket on the Refunds website changed to Refunded and the eVIP that had been attached to the booking was recredited to my account.

So to the Refunds department for their poor action and response time and^^^^ to Customer Service for getting speedy resolution of the matter