That’s my experience too, but today I heard a radio interview with someone from the Consumer Legal Rights Centre (or similar name) saying that actually there is a right under the consumer legislation to a refund or a replacement at the consumer’s discretion and that both airlines and airline customers seem to have forgotten that. They were encouraging airline customers who could wait for an alternative flight to insist that their cancelled flight be replaced with another flight rather than the palaver that goes on with credit vouchers and the need to spend those on a flight or equal or greater amount, and the reality that once a flight is cancelled, it often cannot be replaced with an otherwise identical flight for the same cost. I for one have suffered from this and I hope it gets picked up somewhere in the current proceeding.
edit for typos