It seems to me that the OP is being somewhat less than forthright.
There is still no indication of the type of tickets. Which leads you to think it was a non-refundable, non-changeable tickets.
First it was;
"All the while, we try and raise BA by just about every means we can think off....while burning up the ££'s on mobile's (when we can get reception that is). But we can reach no-one, despite 20 mins sessions of calling CS, Exec Club, the works."
Now it is;
"It was the Exec Club number we phoned as it was the only one I had stored on my phone for them."
and;
"Remember we were in central Switzerland with UK phones....constant tunnels, overpasses, mountains....reception even to phone was patchy and 3G ($$$) slow, intermittent or simply non-existent."