usually the service fee doesn't even get refunded, which feels additionally foul

I think that's exactly the point. They've charged you $2 to process the request. They did that work. Even if you get the money back for the event, they still did the job, so they won't refund the service fee.

	▲	micromacrofoot 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Sure, but imagine a brick and mortar doing that? "we paid our cashier so we can't refund you the full cost" running the service is the cost of doing business