If EasyJets systems are anything like their customer service, their in-flight food, their baggage handling or their scheduling, this is not surprising.
Partner had trouble doing an online check-in with EasyJet. Some kind of error. Arrived at the airport to be told that even though she has the ticket, she does not have a place. There were ~5 people with her in the same situation. 4 other people did not show up for the flight, so some of them got a seat after all. My partner did not, spent the night in the airport. Took about a year and loads of calling to get a compensation. At the end had to outsource it; the outsourced-compensation-getting ended up costing 200 euros.
Overbooking is actually incredibly common. Every flight has some number of passengers not show up. Airlines prefer to compensate one or two people for the fact that they didn't get a seat, instead of leaving some number of seats empty.
Getting compensated should be practically instant though, and definitely not take a year, so something went terribly wrong there.
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.
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.
> Is baggage handling specific to an airline? It looks like it's a service provided by the airport.
Generally you are right yes, it is airport service under one of the operating company of the airport.
However easyJet and other low cost airline have generally a very vertically integrated system where they try to operate almost everything themselves to reduce cost.
Some airport have entire dedicated terminal for them, I would not surprise if they manage also their luggage system in these airports.