Having worked in the exact department you are complaining about for 4 years, I can see both sides of the coin. Lots of complaints come about perhaps due to a lack of understanding of what actually goes on in the office there.
Regarding your query, I can tell you it takes a 'minimum' of 10 working days to get your exams marked, as quoted on the website etc.
If you or ANY one person queries a question, then it'll go for a review, and ALL exams will have to wait until the query is resolved. Sometimes there are 2 correct answers to a question etc etc. So imagine, there are 50 questions that people query up and down the country on every single exam, these all need to be resolved and credits allocated accordingly before the results go out.
Part of the reason their database has problems still- is that questions come and go all the time from the database, and different countries write different exams- so there is a lot of 'loss in translation' that goes on..
Not sure if this helps, and it's an unofficial viewpoint. If anyone has any problems in the future and wants another unofficial explanation close enough to the truth feel free to ask me.
If you think UK CAA is expensive then try the IAA.... 360 euro for a licence issue and 221 euro for a rating issue
