I have no particular objection to the withdrawal of a bounty, specially if offered by a mod and even more specially by one who has lost about 30k rep in good causes, but I do rather object to incorrect guidance. Given [bounty](http://travel.stackexchange.com/help/bounty) emboldens both of: 
 
**non-refundable**  

and
  
**All bounties are paid for up front and non-refundable under any circumstances**  

can we at least have a footnote on that page that mentions there may be very exceptional circumstances in which bounties are refunded?


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[Example][1]:  

[![Bounty substracted][2]][2]

and then...

[![Bounty 'refund'][3]][3]

yet bounty award does not show for any Answer to that Q. At present it does not even show any answer though I think there *was* an attempt at one (that I did not accept as it added nothing of value, IMO). But even if there was an A at one time I am convinced it was not from the bounty awarder (from whose profile I took the image above) and *You cannot award a bounty to your own answer* anyway.

I have a feint recollection (though it might just be imagination) of a case on SO of something like a bounty being put on a duplicate question that was then merged or deleted and a mod mentioned that they had refunded the bounty accordingly. As mentioned, I have no objection to mods being able so to do. (Or it might have been a bounty, not from OP, put on a Q that the OP had requested be deleted for breach of confidentiality/risking sanctions from employer or such like.)  


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The current choice of Title is not mine. Although quite well hidden, one of the bullet points [here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/75192) from March4, 2012 is:

>They can (at their discretion) refund and cancel a bounty.



 


  [1]: http://travel.stackexchange.com/users/101/mark-mayo?tab=reputation
  [2]: https://i.sstatic.net/eyOiu.png
  [3]: https://i.sstatic.net/jgl77.png