@femmefan1946 wrote:This was a voluntary refund of an overestimated shipping fee?
With Paypal the advice for these voluntary partial refunds has been to allow for all your shipping costs before deciding on the amount of the refund.
Remember although the customer sees the fee as $5.47 , you also paid GST and a fuel surcharge. And you packaged the shipment -- bubblewrap is not free.
You may have been given a 5% discount by using your SfSB card, however that is not applied to all services.
And then you were charged 10% FVF on the shipping by eBay.
The buyer sees none of those expenses.
If you feel you overcharged, and want to make a partial refund, remember to adjust the apparent difference by the invisible costs of shipping.
The reason for these partial refunds is because of something eBay has done. They have made it difficult in certain situations for sellers to send revised invoices or buyers to request them. If the revised invoice is received prior to payment a refund is not required. Going forward some sellers may choose to never give a refund and possibly risking the chance of bad will between buyer and seller.
I specifically add a line in the majority of my listings, Please advise prior to payment if your interested in combined shipping. As many have noted, buyers maybe don't read the listing in its entirety. This does NOT stop them from still believing they are owed this refund. It's either that or maybe I only get those buyers from time to time that are part of the "olderish and cranky" set. Apologies for stealing your line. 
I include myself in that set and am getting extremely tired of finding a work around every time eBay makes what they call is an improvement to anything.
Your solution will work for sellers. The problem is, sellers should still be getting a refund on fees, be they a full refund or a partial. Now I guess we just need to get buyers to understand that eBay and a seller has all these darned fees or the better alternative, eBay/PayPal rethink this policy. Like Ross P was known to say....."Isn't gonnaaaaaa happen!!"
-Lotz
FVF's have never been refunded on partial refunds. PayPal did (maybe still do in Canada) give fee refunds on partials but stopped doing so about a year ago in the US.
It's true that long before the rollout in Canada of MP some of the hype surrounding MP inferred that refunds of fees of partials would happen. Once eBay decided to go with the "simplified" fees that has been clarified....NO refunds on partials.
Back in the day you could call eBay and beg, they would give you a courtesy refund. Not sure if that would still work and in any event the fee refund would have to be HUGE to make calling and begging worthwhile.
