Welshtraveller, I hope you got through to the gold circle dept.
I think it may be a case of holding on, I would imagine that the refund dept is very busy at the moment having to go through, administor and process all of the refunds from the volcano dissruption/s. It is not in the nature of EI to withhold your refund, just that they, like other carriers will be very busy with the pure volume of refund requests.
I know they have even hired and re-deployed extra staff to help work through the back log of refunds.