Had to fight at every step for my refund

I booked 4 nights in March for a stay in August and I was very careful to check that the reservation could be cancelled because our plans were not yet fixed. £430 was taken from my account. (fair enough). Things did change and in April I clicked online to cancel the reservation. I was horrified and quite distressed to get a message that my booking was non-cancellable and non-refundable. I emailed them to query it but twice received a return email saying I had sent a blank message. At that point I phoned the customer services in a bit of a panic and was reassured that my reservation was indeed fully flexible but the refund could take 28 days to go back into my account. I was then on hold for at least 15 minutes while they tried to contact the hotel to authorise the repayment . Distressingly, the agent said that he could not get through to the correct department at the hotel in order to sort it out and asked me to phone back the following day. I was not terribly happy about that but overnight I received an email confirming my cancellation and I assumed it was all in place. 28 days later nothing had happened. I spent a further 25 minutes on the phone to customer services again who apparently had no record of my cancellation - despite the fact that I was sitting with their confirmation email in front of me. The good news is that after a further 25 minutes on the line, much of it with terrible on hold bleepy music, I did get a credit receipt and a full refund 3 days later. I just wonder how many people making smaller value bookings would not chase it up thinking it was their mistake or would assume that their account would be re-credited automatically. I will not use the site again and would not recommend it.