Bought model stated suitable for 3D-print, yet has defects. What level of perfection can be expected?

A quick update on this.
CGtrader has offered my money back early on, but my goal was to get in touch and have the model cleaned up and fixed rather than just quitting on it, but the designer would not reply. Next step was to try sort it myself, I am no modeller but know my way around some programs.
Started by trying to import the STL files into other programs than Cura (which is awesome at sorting broken meshes). Becomes evident that its not only the model having flaws, the mesh export files and the .max files are also all fragged. Tried Meshmixer, Fusion 360, and then some. No other program I tried can open the except Cura.
So, I resorted to another try at contacting the designer; by trying to employ the designer as a freelancer proposing he revisits his old project and quote me on a price for it. I thought this to be very diplomatic. But now another month has passed without reply.
Gonna try to get a refund in the end, which makes me very sad. Really wanted this printable.

This is really unfortunate that the seller will not respond to you. I'm sorry this has happened to you here. The majority of models here on CGTrader are of high quality, but usually, the higher quality models will have plenty of preview images and effort put into presenting the models. I can see in his preview images that the software he is using to display the model is actually showing the print errors in red, especially on that last image we could see the highlighted faces. I'm not suggesting you should have seen that because you wouldn't know unless you had experience with that software. I suspect the seller himself is blissfully ignorant of the fact that he has created preview images that indicate problems with his model. In older versions of Netfabb, those red areas would indicate either single-sided polygons or unwelded vertices. At any rate, those are definite errors with the mesh.

Hi there,

Thanks for raising your concerns.

For further information please, contact us here support@cgtrader.com

Kindly,

Judita
CGTrader Support

Email support@cgtrader.com and ask for a refund because that's definitely not a 3d printable model.
And if you want any other model from his a "portfolio" and you have some basic 3d skills just google its name with "3D model" and you will find it somewhere for free.

BTW you need to use your common sense when buying something here next time.