This is common. I literally had to take Icelandair (another really terrible budget airline) to court because their engines don't work (really old planes)

Not only did their system have me logged in another flight in another continent (!), they flat out denied I had a claim even though I had to stay put more than 24h, a good amount of that in the plane.

After getting sued, they tried to backhand contact me (not my lawyer) to pay compensation. Court made them pay.

This is all calculated.

> so something went terribly wrong there.

Not really.

Even if you're legally entitled to compensation Easy Jet is famous to let you jump through so many hoops, lie to you, hang you out to dry, let you wait forever until you just give up.

Outsourcing to some company like Airhelp (which, charges 35% of recovered compensation if successful) may be a viable option to just save you the headache, while sticking it to the carrier trying to stiff you.

Another anecdote. I had a EU Lufthansa flight that was cancelled a few hours before departure. That's 600 euros compensation no questions asked, in theory. When transfering the compensation, there was some kind of hiccup with the banks and it didn't arrive. It took me more than 6 months and more than 30 emails with customer service to get the compensation resent. 90% of the replies were "accounting says funds were sent; not our problem". Ended up using EU's out-of-court customer resolution system (recommended): I think that's what caused them to finally react.