Terrible customer service, impossible to get refunded for flight cancellations despite qualifying for one

The worst customer service, made even more frustrating by the fact that they no longer use their telephone lines and emails take a noted 7-10 working day response time. My flight for 7 December 2021 was cancelled due to Omicron induced travel bans. On this date, I requested a refund from Travelstart through their WhatsApp service. This was not actioned. I followed up on 13 December via email where I again requested my refund process to be initiated. I followed all the steps guided by them. Since January I have been trying to follow up, as I have subsequently needed to pay for a new flight, but these follow up attempts have proved to be futile as their WhatsApp agents are non responsive and clueless. Today I finally get through to an agent where I am told that my booking is still active and no refund has been requested, but I can request a refund through the process I have already followed and await 7-10 working days for someone to contact me to confirm the refund process will be started. I am so frustrated, as I followed full process over 5 weeks ago to initiate the process. It now seems I should repeat the process, only receive a response after 2 weeks to which I should first accept, before they actually start processing the refund. This will mean essentially that takes over 7 just to request a refund, after which we are still advised to wait 12-24 weeks to receive the refund. Further to this, I have confirmed with Qatar that the monies for my booking have in fact already been refunded, meaning Qatar has refunded the money to Travelstart yet customers are required to wait. This feels like pure *****ery, and the fact that it is near impossible to get hold of a single human being at Travelstart to assist furthers my notion that I will never ever use Travelstart in my life again, and I highly advise others to stay far away. Speaking to friends, I have noted that some have waited up to 18 months to be refunded by Travelstart. Completely unacceptable