The US DoT will take over a month to even respond to a complaint and that just starts the 30 days for an acknowledgement and 60 days for a substantive response period from the airline.

I submitted a complaint to the DoT about AA on the 4th of May. I got their first substantive email on Tuesday this week.

AA responded to my web form submission made at the same time yesterday. And that was really just a 'thanks we are looking at it' response.

And AA had at the time and still does have a 'refunds take 7 days' statement on it's website.

I contacted my credit card supplier about a long delay for a refund from Finnair. Even though I mentioned both S75 and chargeback and EU261 provisions they still said it was 45 days before they could even look at it llet alone do anything.

Really at the moment the 7 days for a refund is honoured more in the breach than in the observance and the regulators are lettng that slide and not imposing any sort of punishment on airlines.

People need to be realistic here on the time scales.as well as what a credit card company will do.