Judging from my Real Madrid refund, (which seemed to arrive unannounced quite late on a Friday), I suspect that they are submitting manual one-off payments, and this is taking longer than they originally anticipated.
Also,I normally make 10 payments of £74, but I've actually been promised a refund of £282.50. which is reasonably close to the figure I'd calculated.
However, despite their communication suggesting otherwise, this is not a refunded direct debit. It's just a manual refund, not dissimilar to the one I received within 48 hours after informing the Ticket Office that I couldn't attend the hastily rearranged West Ham game.
The big difference, is that 40,000 seasoncard holders are also expecting a refund, and I suspect the whole process is just too time consuming
This wouldn't have been a major problem if their original email had been more accurate, and not made a commitment that they couldn't keep.