The fee is only $1 when the transaction amount is $24.14. The fee is $29.30 for a $1,000 transaction. For industries with lower margins or higher refund rates, Stripe's refusal to return the fee on refunded transactions is a problem. Regardless, Stripe's nickel-and-diming is not something to be grateful for in any industry when there are competitors that don't do the same.
Feel free to substitue $29.30, or even $1,000 as values that should not sink one's software business.
Considering how often you're going to be issuing refunds (I tend to do maybe 2 or 3 in a big month), I'd be surprised if we hadn't each spent more in billable hours typing into this text box than we will in Stripe refund fees over the next four years.
I organise tech conferences as part of a non-profit.
If I've already started selling tickets, and had to postpone the event because of something like COVID-19, I'd be looking at paying Stripe something like $3,500 in payment processing fees (it's 3.4%+$0.50 here; and assuming $100k in ticket revenue) for the privilege of refunding my attendees.
It's not an amount that would sink our non-profit, but the full fee is also not something that we should have to pay, just because we want to do right by our attendees.
