I have been busy planning my trip to Los Angeles. Since it was a family reunion, I had to find a place that could handle so many adults and kids without hurting anyone’s feelings (you know what I mean)! AirBnb comes to the rescue. Although beachfrontonly.com was so tempting that we almost made the reservations there but the cleaning and service fee stung us. So I called AirBnB and picked up and apartment in LA that would make sense. However, some of us in the family decided to stay further away and get a bigger house (house was adorable) instead of the apartment, except we would check in a day earlier so that we can enjoy some beach. We went ahead and booked the house thinking that we can always cancel the previous reservation as long as it was within 48 hrs. But hang on, when I cancelled the reservation, it refunded all of the money paid upfront, except the service fee. I called and asked AirBnB why the case was? They said that the policy clearly states ‘ Separately, if a guest cancels a reservation that overlaps with any part of an existing reservation, we won’t refund the Airbnb service fee if they decide to cancel. ‘ I told them, I didn’t read all of 10 pages while booking my house so it was a mistake. After many minutes of waiting and chatting with the customer service representative, they made and exception and did a refund. But whoa! I would be very cautious with such complex terms and conditions. Whats the point of the overlap anyway – totally pointless, except make more money for AirBnB and more frustration for customers, who just want to rent a big house (with family watching over their shoulders…literally).