Dealing with a vendor about items damaged from cold

[SJF]

Hi everyone,
I wasn't sure where to post this. I ordered orchids from an online vendor. The held the order until conditions warmed up. Unfortunately, they didn't wait long enough and the temperatures were below freezing, took post office and extra day to deliver then when it tracked to, and was delivered during the big blizzard a few weeks ago. The one heat pack in the box was cold when it arrived. The plants were icy, cold and had mushy roots on the outside of the pots. I e-mailed them right away and took lots of pictures. They told me to let them warm up and send the pictures (this was a Friday). I sent the pictures to them first thing Monday morning. Some of the japonica and phal had crown rot starting and others were just yellow leaved and soggy. The jewel orchid got bright red leaves and only has two leaves left. The two dend. started turning yellow leaved about 4-5 days after arriving. The only plant not suffering is an angr. didieri. Some of the plants are dead, others almost there. They asked me to baby them and get back to them in a couple of weeks. I did that today and included the pictures of the two dend. They said they don't look too bad and should be okay, but if I wanted them replaced to ship them back. I am willing to try to help them stay alive. Here is what I don't understand: I e-mailed them within the hour of receiving the plants, sent pictures of the damage, they made the error sending them out before it warmed up, the shipment was delayed by PO. They want me to send all the dead plants back to be able to get them re-placed. At one point the one owner said he would replace one plant (only mentioned one) when I placed another order...just remind him. I am keeping the dend. and trying to keep them alive, the ang. is okay. The rest are a mess or dead. Why would the vendor want me to spend the money to ship dead plants back? Is this normal practice?