Charging £30 extra for seat on Wizz Air flight

I booked and paid in full for an economy seat on Wizz Air for my daughter. The evening before she left, we did the online check in, as required to avoid a charge for checking in at the airport. We discovered that the ONLY remaining seats in economy were ones with "extra leg room", costing a premium of £30. We neither wanted nor needed this extra legroom yet we had no choice but to select one of these premium seats and pay the additional £30. This is unfair, as we paid for econony and they should really honour the price we paid.


I wrote to Wizz Air after the flight to request a refund of that £30. Whilst I got an auto-acknowledgement of the complaint, they never formally responded. I wrote again about 3 months later and still they never responded. I then appealed to the arbitration service mentioned in their website and I received an auto-acknowledgement but yet again I never heard from them . I repeated that 3 months later and again I never heard another thing.


I have two main points on which I would welcome any advice:


1. Am I right in thinking that they should not have charged me an additional £30? My only "fault" was being slow to choose my seat - all the "normal" economy seats had been taken by the time we checked in. There was nothing that I could see in their terms that allowed them to do this or which warned us of this potential additional expense.


2. Is there a UK arbitration service to whom I can complain about this sharp practice? I feel I need a UK based forum to help our here, as Wizz Air is, I believe, Hungarian and they appear intent on avoiding my complaint as they are outside the EU.


I would happily sue in the UK small claims court if I could enforce the judgement in the UK (I am not sure they have assets in the UK).


Any help on how to address this sharp practice would be greatly appreciated.