I feel your pain. I'd bought a hard-to-get ukulele from a dealer with a good reputation on these boards. When it arrived, it had two scratches on its gloss finish - I saw them right away when doing a look over. In the end, I never reached out to them to complain/inquire, though I definitely thought about it. The reason for this is that I really wanted the instrument - it was a Kiwaya KS-5 - and I ordered it as soon as I received an email from the dealer that one was back in stock. I didn't want to return it and I was too shy to ask them to refund me a small portion of the purchase cost. I mean, how much are two finish scratches worth? I should have emailed them at the very least, and I wish I had, but it was my first serious instrument purchase and, I don't know, I felt "little."
In the end, I kept it. It has since acquired another tiny ding on one edge from a fall. Off topic: One other issue I had was that the stock strings, which were clear, would never ever ever stay in tune. They would go sharp without fail just after a minute of playing. I searched the forums and internet for causes and solutions and tried all sorts of things. It drove me nuts and caused me to hardly play it until I tried these 2 things. First, I tuned it up to D tuning and it played beautifully there. Next, because I didn't want to stay in D tuning, I finally changed out the strings for Fremont Hard Blacks. It's never had an issue staying in tune since. I'm now theorizing that the original strings must have been tuned high and kept there for some period of time prior to sale. Therefore, when I did C tuning, they were too stretched out and wouldn't relax. I noticed this same phenomenon when I met a new ukulele student of mine w/ her instrument's strings tuned waaaay too high and they just couldn't relax at C tuning, but kept going sharp after a literally two seconds.
Back on topic: that's awful customer service, or lack thereof, that you are describing. We can hope that it's because someone over there is having a personal crisis and not because they've given up on good customer communication. If I couldn't live with it and were comfortable with returning it, I think i would give them 2 weeks tops to respond and then initiate a charge back through the CC company. Who knows, maybe this action would get their attention?