Section 75 - seller now claims I owe them money

vometia

A quick (I hope!) question.

I bought something online last August which arrived in significantly damaged condition. I told the retailer about this (complete with full description of the problems, photographs and so on; the delivery guy also marked the delivery note with "damaged", so it should be difficult to dispute) who promptly ignored me.

I raised a Section 75 claim with my card issuer, sending the same information I sent to the retailer, who after some "encouragement" agreed with me and refunded me in full about a month later.

Time passes. The card issuer has obviously claimed back the money from the retailer.

The retailer have just sent me another invoice claiming I owe the full amount. I've responded by saying the cabinet was damaged, and now they are ignoring me, and... I feel I'm back to square one.

I asked the CAB for advice who sent a great deal of information about contractual agreements and laws in other countries (the retailer is in the EU but not the UK) and suggested I could be taken to court. They didn't really cover the matter of the Section 75 claim nor the retailer typically being uncommunicative but the looming prospect of court action worries me.

Should I be worried? I'd presumed that a successful claim would be the end of it but if a retailer can simply re-issue the invoice and claim the debt is outstanding doesn't that rather negate Section 75's usefulness?

At this point I'm not sure what to do, if anything.

A few notes:

• I should add that I am still in possession of the item in question: at no point have they asked for it to be returned, which would be quite difficult for me anyway as it weighs the better part of 100kg. It is useful to me in spite of its condition and I would make a settlement of something like 50% less the costs of sorting all this out (as an example... I have no idea what is "reasonable") but I'm reluctant to do stuff particularly in light of the Section 75 claim having been accepted as I'd be left not knowing who owes what.
  
• I gave the seller what I considered to be reasonable time to respond, a fortnight or so, and warned them in advance that if they continued to not respond to my messages I would be contacting the card issuer, so it didn't happen out of the blue.
  
• "Damaged": it's a computer cabinet which had several significant dents, the base is bent out of shape in several places and of the four feet, one is missing and two are broken. It is covered in what I would consider to be severe scratches right down to the metal, which being steel will eventually rust. It also shows significant signs of wear and stunk of cigarette smoke. I bought it in the belief that it is new and in "new" condition.