DB seat reservation refund

I'm an Australian, who in August travelled from Amsterdam to Berlin via a DB train. We had paid to book two seats on board the train.

Unfortunately the train was cancelled about 10 minutes before it was due to depart and the next train was fully booked already. So we ended up swapping between different free seats and sitting on the floor for the journey.

I then went through the DB website and submitted a refund request forbthe seat reservation. Which granted, the cost of the reservation was only about 10 Euro but the principal of having paid for seats on a cancelled train sits poorly.

The request has sat in limbo for a while and now almost 2 months later I get a LETTER in the mail to my address in Australia. The letter is requesting me to provide the arrival time of the train in Berlin. Which is rediculous because I'm requesting a refund for a seat on a cancelled train. The arrival time is completely irrelevant. Now to get my refund I'm required to mail a response back to Germany containing the missing information.

The cherry on top is that the envelope that it arrived in proudly states how much CO2 has been saved by sending it via Deutschen Post…

Is this what you all have to put up with in Germany? I thought the EU had strong consumer rights. How is it legal for the DB to just keep money for a cancelled service?

If this happened here I'd have expected the cost of the seat to have automatically been refunded without me needing to jump through any hoops.

Anyway rant over, other than that we had a great time during our stay. I'm still in awe at how beautiful and green the German countryside was. 😊