Yes, I agree that the $6.00 charge to enter the lottery, and then the $15 per hiker charge that is not refunded is pretty steep in this day when everything runs on computers.
I'd sure like to see at least a partial refund if a permit is cancelled early enough.
On the other hand, if a full refund were offered, then lots of people would enter the lottery a dozen times, then cancel most of their slots, keeping only the best one. This happens in the river-run lotteries that recreation.gov runs on the "Four Rivers Lottery" / Salmon River, where there is about a 20% success rate.
