Transpacificflyer

I sympathize with the OP as i too have had the BR broken seat experience. with no compensation offered. My impression of BR is that when it screws up, it adopts an attitude of problem?, what problem? This is quite different from one of the big Japanese carriers where people do apologize and management will take responsibility. (The comment that BR is managed similar to a Japanese company is neither appropriate nor accurate.) At the human level, the BR FAs do try their best, and I don't blame them because they have to work within the draconian confines of the head office rules and regulations.

I will go off on a bit of a tangent here and say that the LHR is one of the worst BR long haul international routes, followed closely by Amsterdam. ( Worn aircraft and lower quality FAs are more likely to be found on these routes than on basic routes to the Americas.) And I point the finger at the routing through Bangkok. Appreciably, that is just my feeling, but the EU origin routes to Bangkok are very price sensitive with carriers like Emirates and Etihad consistently offering much lower airfares. Carriers like EVA have done their utmost to cut costs on these routes.
Perhaps its due to the rotation of aircraft that allows non essential maintenance to be deferred a bit longer and the nature of the pax demographics that wears out the cabin crew. Keep in mind that with these routings, it is more likely that a pax will encounter an unresolved maintenance issue than with a flight that has TPE as the turnaround point. For example; with a route that originates in TPE and goes to BKK, while enroute, the seat may break; With a short stay of about an hour in BKK, there may be inadequate time to repair a major defect before the flight leaves for LHR, where it will be turned around quickly for the flight back. There could be several service issues and not enough personnel or time to resolve while in LHR. My experience is that BR prefers to take care of maintenance in TPE avoiding the expense of foreign service contractors. Just my opinion and others may have a different experience, but I offer this to the OP to provide some background as to why his seat was nonfunctioning, on an airline where seats tend to be reliable.