One case is pretty anecdotal but...

My wife and I had a flight scheduled for 9/14/01. We were both willing to jump on one of the first flights after 9/11 but that Friday they were just starting to allow planes to fly again and our flight was canceled.

I had booked through Expedia and of course their lines were swamped so I waited about a week, tried to get refunds. They said about 2-3 weeks.

2-3 weeks passed and they then said 1-2 months.

That passed and they said 3-4 months.

I then got ONE ticket refunded, not two.

So I tried again and they said they'd refile it, it'd take 2-3 months again.

So I disputed it. But since it showed up as two separate charges of equal amounts and I got refunded for one, I didn't know WHICH charge to dispute since there were no ticket numbers associated with the one refunded one I got.

So sure enough, my dispute was denied because I already got a refund for it -- as they said.

Arrgh, so I tried again, carefully explaining that I was refunded one of the two and I was only disputing the second non-refunded one.

I then got a reply back from Amex saying Expedia claimed they issed a paper ticket and I needed to return it (false, it was an e-ticket) to get it refunded.

By this point it was about 7-8 months later. I finally just gave up, thinking I was fortunate that a lot of people lost a lot more than a $400 ticket on 9/11.