I finally got the $150 refund ($200 change fee minus $50 processing fee) applied to my credit card for a flight I had to cancel when my mom had to go into the hospital for a few days (she's fine now, thanks)... and I don't want to think about what sort of hourly wage that would translate to. Let's see:

1. Put in for the refund in April after canceling the flight; five days later, received an e-mail acknowledging the request and asking me to submit a doctor's note on official letterhead.

2. Send in the doctor's note (not on letterhead, but fortunately UA didn't seem to mind) and got a reply from a customer-care rep saying he couldn't find a record of any travel in April. Right, I said; I had to cancel the flight, and here's the confirmation code and ticket number.

3. One day later, get confirmation that I can request the refund by citing an EZ Care case number after applying the price of the cancelled ticket to a future flight and then completing that travel.

4. After completing the travel, tried calling to put in for that refund and got kicked back to the main menu three times in a row.

5. E-mailed to see if we could do this over e-mail, got no reply.

6. Tried calling a few weeks later; at first, the rep I talked to said she couldn't find any record of the doctor's note and asked if I could fax it in. I said something like "it's 2014," and then she said she could try looking this up via the original ticket number. That worked, and she said she'd submit the refund request for me.

7. A day or two later, got an e-mail saying they couldn't process the refund because I had failed to "request a refund within 90 days of the date the fee(s) was originally paid for or by the flight date, whichever is later." That was not true. But 10 hours later, before I could call or e-mail to complain, I got a second e-mail informing me that "your request for a refund has been approved and was processed today."

8. Contrary to that second message, I couldn't check the refund's status online by plugging in the ticket number.

9. The refund landed on my credit card one day after that second message.