The People — Hotel in Paris

AWFUL EXPERIENCE! I booked to stay 2 nights and on check in, I made sure to check the mattress for signs of bed bugs and didnt see any. Returning from my first day out and laying in the bed for my first night there, at 2am, I immediately see that theres signs of bed bugs on the privacy curtains that each dorm bed has and immediately went to tell reception after taking a photo. The traces of bed bugs was on the inner side of the privacy curtain located right by my pillow case so i didnt notice it until i closed the curtain and was laying on my side looking in its direction. The receptions agreed that it looked like it could be signs of bed bugs but werent too sure and so they sent the picture to their manager, I believe her name was Yev. The manager proceeded to call the receptionist and was put on speaker where she adamantly denied that it was bed bugs as bed bugs dont leave traces like the ones in my photo and tried to convince me that many reputable sources and google were wrong and that she knew better as she was trained to detect it even though she only looked at the photo that she was sent for not even a minute. She admitted that the curtain was unhygienic and then gave me the options to be fully refunded and just leave at 2 am or to stick with bed. After pushing she then gave me the option of just switching rooms but i told her i have concerns that my luggage i was storing on the bed could be infected. She told me they had brought a dog to check for bed bugs a week prior and cleaned the infected rooms so she was 100% sure they werent bed bugs. Clearly the privacy curtain was not replaced and the bed i was in could have been one of the infested beds that were cleaned but not carefully or new bed bugs could have been introduced by a guest afterwards. After more arguing that i was not happy with the situations as I was not willing to sleep in the dorm, was not happy with their handling of the situation, and not willing to leave at 2 am without any other arrangement (which they said the would not help me make), I had to settle with sleeping in a different room for the night and getting a full refund to just leave paris in general earlier then schedule. In the morning, once the manager was there, i went to do the refund and check out, and a few minutes later i see that the refund amount on my banking app was less due to currency conversions but they also only refunded only one of the two payments that i made. they had charge my credit card about half of the cost at the time of booking and the rest was paid during check in. Instead of getting two refunds for each charge, i see the i got charged an additional 85 CAD and was refunded 70 CAD for the other one meaning my refund ended up totaling an additional 15 CAD in costs for me. I went back less than 15 minutes from having just checked out to ask and they showed me their system where they reduced my booking duration with some sort of charge and that the other actual payments were refund which confused me and didnt provide any answer as they could have charged me on a different room number (my old or my new), could have just hidden it, or charged me for switching rooms. They then told me there was nothing they could do and that I should just dispute it with my bank meaning i have to dispute all 4 charges individually. I had informed my sister of the situation and when she called me while i was there, to see it was resolved, the manager then threatened to call the police on me as she saw I was on my phone. DO NOT STAY HERE if you are expecting a clean bed and good service because the receptionists are nice but any advance assistance will not be adequately handled by the manager. Attached is the photo of the signs of bed bugs on the innerside of the curtains which i showed them and they said bed bugs dont make but if u look it up, i think its the same signs as the milder images but you can judge that for yourselves if u think its bed bugs or just unhygienic and whether the resolution they offered was up...

I wrote the hostel sevaral times before arrival. Every time I received a prompt response. This was very helpful and much appreciated. However, I did not ask the right questions.

I arrived at 2pm for a 4 day stay. I was told the check in is 3pm. I said that is not a problem. I would like to leave my bag and come back later for the check in. There I was told I need to rent a locker for 5 euro for the rest of the day.

When I got in the room was when I found there is no soap, shampoo or towel. This may be common in Europe, but definitely not prevailing, as I came from a London hostel where all three were provided for free and the total price is less. And they could have told me to bring these before my arrival.

Anyway I asked the front desk if I could buy a shampoo. The answer is yes. The gentleman told me they sell a "solid shampoo" for 3 euro. He showed me. It looks and smells like a standard, round, hotel soap. I then asked if there is a shampoo left by a previous guest that I could use. The gentleman laughed. He told me I could go to a market and buy one, which I did. I left the shampoo in my room at the end of stay.

It costed me 4 euros to rent a towel.

There is also a Paris city tax that is in addtion to all the tax paid when I booked through Agoda. Pay this tax on your arrival.

It was not hot outside. But the room was steamy hot. The window could only be openned to have a narrow gap. So there is very little air that could be let in. The humidity got me. The next morning I had no apetite for breakfast.

From the second night one of the roommate managed to get a fan into the room.

There are three shower stalls on my floor. My room was 419. The water is very little and not warm enough. The water is controlled by a push valve. This is the first time I have seen such a valve being use on a shower. When I was taking shower, I had to push this valve evey five seconds or the water will stop. This made the water being little and not warm situation even worse.

As if that is not enough to save water, there is actually an hour glass in the shower for one to use to time his stay in the shower. There is a hour glass, a vial of sand.

All lights in the bath room are individually motion sensed and timed. I was unfortune at one time to sit in a toilet stall where the sensor is not sensitive. As a result the light kept going out. And I have to wave my arms to get the light back on every minute while doing business.

The floor of the bathroom flooded twice during my stay.

The location is convient as it is close to a metro station, for line seven. However, the street is busy. And Paris likes to use siren as siren is heard all through the night. If it were winter the siren would have been not a bother as I could then shut the window.

The breakfast costs 12 euro additional. No receipt was given. There is yogurt, cereal, cheese and two kinds of pastry. There is no egg, milk or meat, not even cold ham. I found a bakery nearby. That was where I got breakfast from the second morning.

On saturday night there was a party in the dining hall. The bass portion of the music was powerful and it shook my bed. It would be a great attraction for party goers. But I was there to sleep. Towards mid night it was still going. So I went down to ask if it would stop at mid-night. The answer was no, there is no way to stop it at midnight. It would go at least to 2am....

Would never stay here again and would not recommend it to anyone. My friend and I did A TON of research before booking this hostel for our trip around Europe. We found this hostel and the reviews looked decent, the pictures were good, and the website made the hostel feel welcoming, fun, friendly, and nice. We really felt like we found the best option, but were quickly proven wrong when arriving.

We were two university students and booked a four-person all girl dorm with a private bathroom. We were greeted nicely by the desk attendants upon arrival and got quickly checked in - along with some restaurant recommendations for dinner. That was the last good thing to happen at this hostel. After a long day of exploring Paris, after traveling, we went to bed to get some rest before our full day the next morning. Around 12am/1am I was woken up by the front desk attendant telling me that they had accidentally double booked the bed and the person who was originally assigned the bed they had given me needs to get their some belongings from the bed safe (which I wasn't using so was not aware there were items in it). I felt horrible for the girl who was forced to transfer beds/rooms because of their mistake.

The next day, we were out until 12am exploring more of the city as much as we could before we left the following morning. When we returned to the hostel we found both of our beds occupied by other people! There was only one bed left in that room so my friend and I were split up into different rooms and I had to pack up all of my belongings to transfer to another room before checking out just a few hours later.

The management promised to refund us for our stay since the two (and only) nights we stayed at the establishment we were dealing with issues that prevented us from having a decent place to sleep. After waiting for an email, we got back home and their email told us that instead of a refund they would give us a 30 euro voucher for our next stay. It was a horrible experience accompanied by horrible customer service.

Extra note: We understood that hostels would have hotter rooms than usual (though the heat in Paris was certainly not helping and needing the bunk bed curtain closed for privacy made the bed a greenhouse and we woke up in a pool of sweat), and were considerate of hostels being environmentally mindful of water usage, but you had to press the shower button every five seconds to keep the water running of keep your hand on it and shower with one hand to have a decent shower! Just some things to keep in mind when booking.

Long story short: very disorganized and unsatisfactory customer service - lying to us about giving us a refund. ALso not being able to effectively keep track of when a bed is occupied is the absolute bare minimum...