Ouch. That is painful. Sounds like DL enjoys holding on to the money to earn them some interest. But glad to see AS doing well.
As a data point, I had a BA flight cancelled. After a 15-20 minute wait, spoke to someone in their call center. Took another 20 minutes or so, but he processed the refund of both my flight costs and seat reservation on the phone. Seat refund showed up within 48 hours on my credit card and flight about 5-7 days later. Very happy with that. Though I have heard some nightmare stories on the BA forum.
A friend of mine said she could never get through to AS the week before easter to cancel a re-scheduled flight to Mexico. I don't know how reliable she is, but she claimed she called multiple times and waited an hour+ and never got through. It wouldn't let her cancel online she claimed and she ended up doing nothing (and wasting quite a bit of money). I don't think this agrees to most of what I've heard so I'm assuming she just couldn't be bothered, waited too late, and lost her money.