The refund system is one of AA's worst attributes. They're automatic on DL and UA (and even are some of the time on AA), yet the majority of refunds still seem to need some form of manual processing.

It gets especially bad when you start dealing with mixed methods of payments (money + trip/flight credits).

You can't tell me that this isn't by design at this point (I wonder how much AA is able to wrongfully keep each year in airfare that should have been returned in some form to passengers).