PodShare Venice (PERMANENTLY CLOSED) — Hotel in Los Angeles

We stayed here 7 nights in their semi private room, (just a mattress on the floor with small table & lamp with dusty floor, dehumidifer & fan) which is a very hot tiny room (we had to have the huge fan on all night so sleep without earplugs was impossible) with a slanted ceiling in the roof of the property & next to a room they hire out for meetings, so at least you have a lockable door & the only privacy you will ever get here! Unlike any hostel I have ever stayed in this is all (apart from that mentioned above) on 1 level, so the front door & reception lead on to where all the beds are. There is a tv room with a toilet and then leading off reception is the kitchen (not cleaned very often by the look of it) and the toliets & showers (you can wash your teeth while watching people check in as there's no door on the toilet & shower area which we found very odd!). 2 toilets & 2 showers serve most of the occupants so get up early unless you want to queue. The same soaking wet shower mats were there all day every day on a very slippery tiled floor, only 1 shower locked and had a bench to put your clothes. The floors all over the building seem to get swept occasionally but never hoovered so if you walk round in socks or bare feet they get filthy. They have Quiet Time from 10pm til 10am, where its lights out and told off for talking if the staff catch you (we were told off for chatting quietly while making a cuppa one morning by staff at 9.45am!!) They do your laundry for $5 but I don't know what with as it didn't come back much cleaner than when it went! The garden area would be lovely to sit in except for the fact everyone lounges about smoking weed all day & night (legal in California). We stayed here as its a good price and 15 min walk to Venice beach. the bus stop outside takes you into the city (takes over 1hour) and opposite the bus goes to Sana Monica. Some of the staff were more help than others and did more work while others seemed to just chat & play with their phones. A good point is there are computers where you can use the internet for free. Its a good place to stay, very basic but I think it needs a bloody good clean & doing more often (esp. the floors as theres a lot of people about and near the beach so its always dirty). They have leaflets saying that if you're in a bunk (or Pod as they call them) not to try & make it private by hanging stuff on the rails as they will remove it as it prevents community living! Strangest hostel I have stayed in for some time, has the potential to be so much better with a...

This place was absolutely terrible. Do not stay here! I booked a “pod” because I had a very long overnight layover on my way to Ecuador. The price was not at all cheap, especially for what you get, but it looked neat online and was close to the beach which was a plus because I had time to kill before my next flight. I got in late and checked in. ||||There was no mask requirement and I was not asked for my vaccine card or asked any questions about symptoms. I immediately heard someone with a horrible hacking cough in the main dorm near my pod. He coughed and coughed all night. I kept my mask on the whole time, even when trying to sleep. It’s hard to believe they wouldn’t at least require symptomatic people to not sleep in the same room as everyone else. What a great place to breed the next Covid variant! My bad for booking a hostel during a pandemic, but still….||||I couldn’t sleep and at one point I checked the time on my phone and saw a bug crawling on it. I turned on the light and saw dozens of bed bugs crawling all over me, my backpack, the bed, and the walls of the pod. I grabbed all of my things and ran to the shower (where there was toxic black mold all over the ceiling), and then outside for the rest of the night, waiting for the sun to come up so I could get away from there. Early in the morning a man came out and I asked him if he had seen the bugs, and he said no but had an itchy neck. Sure enough he had the telltale line of bedbug bites. ||||The hostel insisted that they had the place cleaned of bed bugs a couple months ago and had no more complaints since then, but the guy with the bites had seen them steaming the corners of the pods the day before which is a common way to try to exterminate them, which makes me think they knew about the infestation. They did refund my money and offer free laundry, but there was no way I was going back in there so I walked to a laundromat. So much for a relaxing morning on the beach.||||Steer clear of this place unless you want an overpriced bed with bugs...

I never share reviews, but this time I feel compelled to share my experience as it is the first time something of the sort happens to me. After sleeping a night at the pod share, I woke up with bites all over my body (from lice or bugs). The customer service team was completely dismissive of my situation stating wrong facts and asking me to share photos of the bugs/lice (as if I would have still stayed in that hostel after seeing them). This is not considering the fact that the place is worse than a military barrack: it is smelly, of course there is no privacy (that's part of the deal) and you get a guy asking you aggressively "Who are you?" every time he sees you even though you've told him already who you are (most probably because they have had people coming in that are not guests and who steal guest's personal property). The place is not cheap ($70/person), and if you travel with someone else in particular you might as well take a hotel room for $10-$20 extra and they are going to be the most well-spent bucks of your trip.

To rebut the response of the owner who continuously pursues in making false statements : False statement 1: I slept alone in a single bed. My friend was sleeping in the top bed on the other side of the corridor. False statement 2: I emailed you THREE days after check-out on the 16th of May 2023 (I checked out on May 13th 2023). And the reason I waited for so long is because I had never been bitten by bed bugs before and I wanted to make sure that they were not mosquito bites. False statement 3: You can clearly see the bites. I sent the photos where the bites were not completely visible to show you the evolution of the bites from the first day we checked out to prove to you that that it couldn't have been any other hotel. it took about 12 hours after check-out for the bites to become fully visible. False statement 3: I didn' t use any public transportation during the trip as we had rented a car.

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