What do you open a case in this situation?

[WeAreEternal]

A couple of weeks ago I bought a reasonably priced dress on eBay.
in the listing the seller stated that she loved the dress but hadn't had much chance to wearing it, she also stated that it was in very good condition.

The dress arrived and honestly I was quite disappointed. It's a beautiful dress and I will definitely use it, however, it's not in very 'good condition', it's in what I would consider 'well used condition'.

There are several spots on the dress where the stitching is coming away, I assume this is from the dress being pulled on an off quite enthusiastically (it's quite a tightly fitted dress so I could see how someone might struggle to get it on and off easily)
Also the lining inside the dress is torn in two places.

I sent the seller a message straight away and told her that I was quite disappointed about the damage to the dress.
She replied and said "what damage? I didn't see any damage at all!"
I replied giving her a full description of all the damage.
She did not reply.
A few days later I decided to take pictures of the damage and send them to her, just in case you thought I was nitpicking and she genuinely hadn't noticed any damage, I wanted to show her that the damage was really there.
During this time I also inspected the dress more and realised that the loose seam stitching will probably need to be resewn so not to get any worse.

That was a few days ago and I've still not heard from the seller.

Yesterday I took the dress into a local seamstress shop.
She looked to the dress and told me that it will be £25 to unpick and resew the stitching and that she would recommend not waiting too long to get it done.

Initially I was not planning to take this any further, I didn't want anything from the seller, just let her know that I was not be leaving positive feedback.
However, now I think maybe I should open a case, or maybe I should just return the dress.
I really don't want to though as I quite like it despite the damage.

I'm not really sure what to do, the fact that the seller has ignored me has annoyed me and kind of shows me that she probably knew about the damage and just hope that whoever bought it wouldn't say anything.
I think in an ideal world I would like her to pay for the repair but I'm not sure if that is realistic.

So MN, what do you think I should do??

How much was the dress?

You can't force a seller to offer you a partial refund, although you can ask.

However at the end of the day a seller can insist you return the dress for a full refund.

It's up to you how you proceed at this point, obviously that depends on how much you want to keep the dress.

I paid just over £50 inc postage.

I know I can't force anything, I honestly wasn't expecting anything and probably would have begrudgingly paid the repair costs and not mentioned it at all but then the seller ignored my messages which has really annoyed me.

If you want to keep the dress, I wouldn't open a request, just ask the seller for a partial refund to cover repairs, and if they say no (which it sounds like they will), then leave negative feedback.

That's all you can do if you don't want to return it for a full refund I'm afraid.

PS if you do leave negative feedback then keep it factual so eBay have no reason to remove it.

Thank you.

I was think of posting something along the lines of,
"Dress described as "good condition" but had damage which required professional repairs. Seller ignored all comunicaton once the damage was brought to her attention."

I'm in two minds about whether I really want to keep it to be honest.
I have been looking for this specific dress for a while, I paid a little more than I planned to but was happy to have won it.
Even with the repair costs it's a lot less than it would have costed to buy the dress new but I definitely would not have paid that much had I known about the damage when I bid.