Maybe you have your loans "backwards" (e.g. you wanted one large and one small loan, but wound up out of order). 

We wound up filing evictions on all three. 

If you don’t know where they are, google gun shot wounds and filter your time setting for the last year and you will see where they are.  

To say I'm scared to do this again is an understatement so here I am licking my wounds and learning more before I let another REI company tell me that they will help eliminate risk if I join for thousands of dollars. 

Lick your wounds and move on.

If things had wound up costing more than I expected I might break even after selling, and that was okay to me at that time.

Just as you wound up with a crazy guy working for you, plenty of contractors wind up working for crazy clients.  

I just wound up paying some fees twice such as application fees, but the refi's save my thousands of dollars a month, so the sooner it's done, the better.You're better off doing it with another bank as you'll run in circles with this one.

Should I attempt to get my $500 back and if so what would be the suggested way of going about it or just let it go and lick my wounds?

For example , I own a property in Indianapolis that on paper “should” have rented for $1200 but $1135 wound up being the right number.