Duane Street Hotel Tribeca, Sonder — Hotel in New York

If you care about your personal belonging, basic cleaning, and working amenities - think twice before booking your stay with Sonder Duane.

I stayed in Sonder Duane Street in New York in the second week of January, for what was supposed to be 5 nights - but I literally ran away from there after the second night.

In short - Sonder had failed to meet any of the basic standards of a hotel or place of hospitality: Lack of Basic cleaning (the shower was not clean, rolls of hair remain from previous guests); Unusable basic amenities (A/C control was not functioning, hence - no heat at night with temp outside under 30F); Low level of maintenance (broken floor tiles next to the bed posing real safety hazard); and most important - Lacking the basic level of Security and Respect for guests and their personal belongings (Room Door was left wide open by the staff for more than 12 hours, after coming to fix the previous issues).

I was traveling for business, as I do often for many years, and I had never in my life experienced a set of so many cases of negligence, as I experienced in the first 2 nights in the Sonder hotel. Arriving at night (22:30) to the room, I entered the shower to discover hair rolls and an unclean shower. Got out of the shower and tried to open the AC with heat - but the controller was not functioning (no receptionist at this hour). So the first I spent cold with no heat after the disgusting unclean shower. First thing in the morning I went to the receptionist showing her the issues. I left the hotel for the day, and after an hour - at 10 am - I received a text informing me that "the issues were solved". I got back to the room at 23:30 after a day of work - to discover the door wide open, with all my personal things in the room. I was afraid and felt like my personal space was breached and violated. So the second night I couldn't sleep as I was afraid that any person could have gone by my personal stuff and god knows what else. As a 'great' ending - I cut my feet on the broken floor tile walking from the bed to the shower.

In the morning I packed my things and left, after explaining the receptionist that I couldn't stay in a place which is not safe. She confirmed that my room was left open for more than 12 hours, and said she understand my feeling.

I wrote to them and asked for my money back, and so I was refunded for the nights that I didn't stay there (3 nights), but received an email from Sonder's Operation Manager, Mr Ren Frazer, informing me that "Unfortunately we will be unable to provide any further refund." as according to the mail, they were operating just fine...

It is clear that this was my first and last stay in Sonder (after running from it after only 2 nights). I highly recommend to you - think twice before booking your stay...

DO NOT BOOK HERE. THIS PLACE IS A COMPLETE SCAM. The pictures online are deceiving and it's more like a single step up from a hostel. First day here we overheard four staff sitting on couches in the lobby talking about how shocked they were that people paid so much to stay at the hotel. ||This is my first time ever leaving a review for anywhere because of how terrible of an experience I had at Sonder in Tribeca. I booked a King sized room for three nights at around $600 per night, which ended up actually being so small that my partner and I couldn't even have our suitcases open. First night the AC stopped working, the thermostat was reading 80 degrees in our room and so I messaged the app. Two maintenance people came into our room and said it was busted, one maintenance guy apparently told my fiance "it's not even that hot in here". This was after I asked him to give us a few minutes to pack to move rooms and when I asked if that was okay he said, "well I guess it'll just have to be". Apparently this was the maintenance manager? Where is the professionalism?||I ended up having to cancel a dinner with a friend of 20 years who I had not seen because the entire ordeal took over two hours. The person at the front desk said there were no upgrades available to move to a different room and that we could move to an identical room in the building where the air was working. Once we finally agreed to that, we entered into the new room and they had DOWNGRADED us to a queen size room in much worse condition. When I went back down to the front desk (for the fourth time) to tell him he had moved us to a smaller room after saying that the room would be identical he said "oh yeah, looks like it's a queen. That's all we got." ||We proceeded to spend 1.5 hours on the phone with customer service, who refused to let me speak to a manager or supervisor and said someone would call me back in 24-48 hours and that they couldn't issue me a refund. And then, get this, the AC in our new DOWNGRADED room DOES NOT WORK. ||I have a theory that this place puts thermostats in the room that make the person believe they're setting the temperature to something but the whole building is probably set to 75 degrees to save money. ||This place is definitely on the verge of getting shut down. It's bad here: the rooms are in bad condition, poorly managed, unprofessional staff, terrible customer service, and totally uncomfortable. Our stay was only for three nights, if a hotel can not refund someone for very solid reasons less than $2,000 then there's something...

DO NOT BOOK HERE. THIS PLACE IS A COMPLETE SCAM. The pictures online are deceiving and it's more like a single step up from a hostel. First day here we overheard four staff sitting on couches in the lobby talking about how shocked they were that people paid so much to stay at the hotel. ||This is my first time ever leaving a review for anywhere because of how terrible of an experience I had at Sonder in Tribeca. I booked a King sized room for three nights at around $600 per night, which ended up actually being so small that my partner and I couldn't even have our suitcases open. First night the AC stopped working, the thermostat was reading 80 degrees in our room and so I messaged the app. Two maintenance people came into our room and said it was busted, one maintenance guy apparently told my fiance "it's not even that hot in here". This was after I asked him to give us a few minutes to pack to move rooms and when I asked if that was okay he said, "well I guess it'll just have to be". Apparently this was the maintenance manager? Where is the professionalism?||I ended up having to cancel a dinner with a friend of 20 years who I had not seen because the entire ordeal took over two hours. The person at the front desk said there were no upgrades available to move to a different room and that we could move to an identical room in the building where the air was working. Once we finally agreed to that, we entered into the new room and they had DOWNGRADED us to a queen size room in much worse condition. When I went back down to the front desk (for the fourth time) to tell him he had moved us to a smaller room after saying that the room would be identical he said "oh yeah, looks like it's a queen. That's all we got." ||We proceeded to spend 1.5 hours on the phone with customer service, who refused to let me speak to a manager or supervisor and said someone would call me back in 24-48 hours and that they couldn't issue me a refund. And then, get this, the AC in our new DOWNGRADED room DOES NOT WORK. ||I have a theory that this place puts thermostats in the room that make the person believe they're setting the temperature to something but the whole building is probably set to 75 degrees to save money. ||This place is definitely on the verge of getting shut down. It's bad here: the rooms are in bad condition, poorly managed, unprofessional staff, terrible customer service, and totally uncomfortable. Our stay was only for three nights, if a hotel can not refund someone for very solid reasons less than $2,000 then there's something...