PayPal keeps a portion of their fee when you issue a refund

This afternoon, I received a payment from someone I didn't know for an amount that was unusual ($5.00). It was clearly a mistake, so I issued a refund. Well, when I looked at the transaction closer, I noticed that the initial fee was .45, but the amount that was refunded was only .15.

Now, we're obviously not talking about a lot of money here, but it's a matter of principle. How can PayPal take money from someone's account for an unauthorized transaction? 

I never had them keep a portion of the fee on refund.

I never had them keep a portion of the fee on refund.

You have, you probably just didn't notice it. It's such a small amount that most people don't notice it or don't even care. You know how they charge a .30 transaction fee plus a percentage of the dollar amount. Well, they'll refund the percentage of the dollar amount, but they keep the transaction fee. I bet they make tens of millions off of this little scam each year.

THey have been doing that for awhile now 

I don't know the exact policy but I know for some time now if you do what they consider to be excessive refund they stop giving you the fees back to discourage you from doing so many refunds. They are getting charged fees from teh banks or cc companies so they dont want to lose money because we do to many refunds. maybe this is a policy across the board now but in the past as long as you did maybe 10 or less refunds per month and not high dollar amount refunds they didnt bother taking any money