********* and false advertising of cancellation guarantee

I bought flight tickets through Edreams with the “cancel for any reason guarantee”, and because my conference has been cancelled I’ve been calling for 3 weeks now trying to cancel the flights. I understand that it won’t be a full refund but I paid an additional R400 per ticket (6 tickets for my partner and I), and the policy says I should have received a R16k refund. Apparently you cannot cancel your flight online only telephonically. I have now, in total, held on the phone, without any operator or assistance for 5 hours. They claim to be busy with calls because of the Carona virus- but I believe they’re completely avoiding our calls because they don’t want to cancel our flights and give our refunds. There is currently no way of reaching the agency- only an online “bot” or automated voice prompts. The tickets are with Emirates and I’m only hoping that the airline will at least pay attention or respond to my query.