The Hotel Mac & Suites — Hotel in Richmond

The room is clean and the bed is fine and the kitchen is a nice touch. Spend a little more time in the room and you start to see the wear and tear of the place. Little knicks in the wall, smudges on the side tables. The sound of cars on all sides permeates the room with a dull hum all night, punctuated by a gunning engine or peeling tire on the local streets. Just down the block is a liquor store and mini mart – but do not even think of entering these establishments, as their clientele is strictly maskless mouthbreathers drinking and scoring meth in plain sight. The parking lot, while gated off with a code, feels unsafe; its walls seem easily scalable, and you don’t need a code to exit, because the gate automatically opens when approached from the inside (even on foot). All in all, I felt uneasy here. I wanted to like it a lot more. The back patio is a nice touch. The blue light fridge looks cool. Maybe during the day it has more charm? Maybe before covid the area was more charming, a sort of roughneck hamlet stuck above Berkeley and SF. Currently, the occasional sound of the passing train roars through the room all night as if reminding you you should have spent $50-75 more and booked a spot in San Francisco itself. I thought Richmond might feel safer, but if I am going to be worried about going to my car to fetch a sweater because the room’s heater doesn’t work, I might as well spend it in an iconic SF hotel rather than an off ramp inn with no innkeeper on-site to help you with your experience. It feels like the staff is scared of the property too – it would be easier to locate a ghost. The clerk gave me their phone number, but when the heat won’t work at 11pm, there’s nothing to do but sleep with all your clothes on.

Edit: Woke up ice cold just now because the characters in my dreams literally stopped the dream to tell me they were cold too and please...

The worst hotel experience of my life.||The parking lot is a lie, the gate code they give you does not work.||The hotel rooms are not actually at the address they give, they provide the real address on your check in date. The actual address is on a sketchy street riddled with homeless people along train tracks. I arrived alone at night and outside of my room was a man in a ski mask staring at me as I tried to gather my things. Terrified, I went to the restaurant they own in tears trying to figure out what to do. A host at the restaurant got in my car and drove with me to the other building to escort me in. Totally uncomfortable, but very nice of him to help me.||There is no front desk or onsite hotel staff and it does not feel safe.||It is extremely loud, as trains pass by outside your window all night long.||The walls are dirty, the vents are caked with dust, the bed is so hard and uncomfortable, the phone and refrigerator do not work.||The hotel will charge you a $150 cleaning fee for pets even though they don’t tell you about this until after the fact. They claim to be pet friendly but they wait until you're locked into the reservation to divulge the pet policy buried in the bottom of an email, not mentioned anywhere during the booking process.||Hilariously, my dog is a service dog who absolutely left no trace and they are illegally trying to charge a cleaning fee for him being there and now I have to take legal action.||An all around nightmare of a place that tries to profit by using the “gotcha” business model. The receptionist finds joy in being an awful...

The worst hotel experience of my life.||The parking lot is a lie, the gate code they give you does not work.||The hotel rooms are not actually at the address they give, they provide the real address on your check in date. The actual address is on a sketchy street riddled with homeless people along train tracks. I arrived alone at night and outside of my room was a man in a ski mask staring at me as I tried to gather my things. Terrified, I went to the restaurant they own in tears trying to figure out what to do. A host at the restaurant got in my car and drove with me to the other building to escort me in. Totally uncomfortable, but very nice of him to help me.||There is no front desk or onsite hotel staff and it does not feel safe.||It is extremely loud, as trains pass by outside your window all night long.||The walls are dirty, the vents are caked with dust, the bed is so hard and uncomfortable, the phone and refrigerator do not work.||The hotel will charge you a $150 cleaning fee for pets even though they don’t tell you about this until after the fact. They claim to be pet friendly but they wait until you're locked into the reservation to divulge the pet policy buried in the bottom of an email, not mentioned anywhere during the booking process.||Hilariously, my dog is a service dog who absolutely left no trace and they are illegally trying to charge a cleaning fee for him being there and now I have to take legal action.||An all around nightmare of a place that tries to profit by using the “gotcha” business model. The receptionist finds joy in being an awful...