Thanks everyone for your responses - really appreciate it.

A few comments/clarifications. This was a Samsung tablet rather than iPad (specifically galaxy tab S7+ 256gb).

As for the data - I mentioned that this is the weakest part of the claim. To be honest i mostly threw it in there as a counter-response to BA falsely trying to claim that my tablet was 3 years old. Real loss was on ~8-10h of work documents that i have worked on during that trip and had to redo. Shame on me on not backing them right away.

Also to clarify - BA didn't offer to compensate for 80% costs of the new tablet but rather for 80% of the original price I paid for the lost one. And to be honest if this offer came with no strings attached i would have easily taken it and called it a day. It is really their demand that I send in a receipt for a new one that bugs me. Maybe i am missing some legal theory behind this but in my understanding damage has occurred when the device was destroyed: i lost an item i owned and any ability to use it. It shouldn't matter whether i replace it, decide to buy a laptop instead, get a new phone with larger screen, buy a case of whisky to drink my sorrows etc. What i would do with the money really shouldn't affect damage valuation. If they offered to cover 80% cost of a new device it would have been a different story.

I plan to eventually replace it but emphasis on eventually. I am hoping to find a good deal on BF/CM but if not I will probably wait until i find a good promotion. Considering how unresponsive BA was with this (2 months till first response) I am also quite afraid that if just let the case sit for a few weeks / months they would close it and i won't be able to reach anyone at BA anymore. I have considered just ordering a new tablet as some posters suggested and then canceling the order before it even ships but while not illegal it does seem like a shady and dishonest approach.

To people asking what I am hoping to achieve with CEDR - really primary goal is to just get rid of BA's demand that i buy a new one. So definitely more principle based than monetary goal. Personally I am willing to work with logical company policies (I don't like the depreciation but I get the logic and willing to accept it with little fuss) but I get absolutely triggered by completely arbitrary ones. I have to admit that there is a major emotional component as well: if this was their immediate offer I would have been a lot more fine with it, but it feels very wrong to agree an ungrounded demand after BA ignored me for 2 months, lied multiple times during the process and tried to falsely claim that it was a 3 year old tablet to lowball the value. I generally feel that companies get away with a lot of shady .... precisely because customers aren't willing to stand for themselves and I don't want to contribute to that.