You are probably right. It was a small amount. I would be surprised if the charge back approval wasn't completely automated. But at least they side with the consumer some of the time. PayPal was just straight up "nope, we don't care that they didn't deliver the product at all".
The OP’s conplaint is actually that paypal sides with the consumer too much, enabling fraud. If I wanted it’s fairly easy to do since paypal pretty much refunds on request if you show you return something, and by something it literally means anything, including an empty box.
The disputes system is horribly inefficient. Reqarding fraudsters is worse than simply losing the money to mitigation efforts, as reqarding them incentivizes them too!
Right now payment processors are fairly detached from the negative repercussions, so they basically encourage customers to do chargebacks or disputes.
