Kasa Gaslamp Quarter San Diego — Hotel in San Diego

I stayed at the Marin for 17 days in April 2021. Overall, I had a really great time, but there are definitely certain things I'd want to point out to anyone considering it. This is an EXPENSIVE stay but you're paying for the location, certainly. Some other features/thoughts:

-For light sleepers, think twice. I have earplugs I wear to bed (Sonder actually supplies you with earplugs and a noise machine, though oddly, no batteries for the noise machine), and it is LOUD at night. This unit is located above one of the most fun and hip Spanish restaurants in downtown - the downside is they play EXTREMELY loud music each night- up to maybe 2 AM or so on the weekends. This interrupted my sleep pretty consistently. -The neighborhood is awesome and I felt extremely safe. -The apartment itself is nice! It's cozy but fairly spacious. The bathroom is a good size. The floor was really sticky and when I wore bare socks, they turned black, so it's definitely a shoes-on kinda place. -Currently there are no requests allowed for cleaning or maintenance through Sonder, so for longer stays, some stuff becomes an issue (towels, garbage). -The AirBNB does not do a good job advertising this: there's free laundry on the second floor. Only 2 washers and 2 dryers but I washed clothes probably 4 times on my trip and never once were they in use when I wanted them. I imagine most people aren't staying here long enough to want to do laundry. -The Wifi is not great. It held up on 2 devices but if you stream video on one of them, the other one slows to a crawl. Something to consider if you're traveling with more than 1 person. It's especially bad in the bathroom and bedroom. -The kitchenette leaves a lot to be desired. My unit had an electric stovetop with 2 burners, a microwave, and a half-fridge. The sink is in an awful spot with excessive pressure so when I washed dishes, there was always inevitably water on the floor too. For extended stays like mine, a half-fridge was an issue. Very hard to fit more than 1 half-gallon sized anything. -Parking in Gaslamp is EXPENSIVE. For extended stays, I'd recommend calling Park it on Market and do a monthly pass (it's one block up from this unit). I stayed there nightly to drive to work and it was $11-23 bucks each time. If there's a Dodgers game, parking gets really really tricky. They advertise street parking but it is EXTREMELY limited, and with COVID precautions, outdoor dining overflows onto 5th. It's a really cool experience at night to see, but that gobbles up a lot of the parking in the area. -Mail is a bit of a headache at Sonders. There's no front security guard, not even really a lobby, so they recommend either shipping Amazon Packages to a Locker at the 7-11 on the other side of 5th or setting up a UPS Access point. Again, maybe not something to consider for short stays, but for extended ones, it's a bit of a pain.

Overall. you're probably not coming to San Diego to stay inside, so most of these concerns are probably minor nitpicks. However for extended stays, and for the price you pay, they're worth considering. I'd have no problem recommending Sonder to anyone looking for an awesome location in Gaslamp, and they have very friendly customer service - though it takes a while to answer (I had a message exchange with a really great rep that took over 80 minutes with sometimes 7-8 minute gaps between...

Location good but this was THE worst hotel/booking experience I have had in any city or country around the world.

The front door to the property has a dysfunctional keypad and the handle seems broken. (Photos below) I am unable to access the property, let alone my room.

At this moment, it has now been two and half hours of waiting in the rain texting and calling the only customer service number for Kasa. I have received numerous apologies and have been assured several times that the issue was being addressed and someone was on the way. Yet here I am waiting.

The company claims that access can be made through an adjacent restaurant but that is NOT a solution. Access to a paid reservation should not depend on a restaurant operating at specific hours. Additionally, with this keypad issue, why would I trust leaving my items in a room and risk being locked out from my belongings waiting for a nonexistent maintenance team to help. (Makes you wonder how sheets are cleaned huh?)

Same story as many companies. Trying to make as much money with as little staff as humanly possible which makes problem solving a non-starter. Two hours of 🤷‍♂️ as a response from the company. I have no recourse now other than cancellling my vacation and driving back home.

Edit: 6 hours later and they were still assuring me that they were working on a solution as fast as possible and would hear back soon. By that point, I made the decision to cancel the entire trip and began making the 5.5 hour drive back home.

As of now, they say they've granted me a "courtesy" 1 time refund despite their no refund policy. Treating this as a courtesy is disrespectful considering everything that happened today. Besides, I give it a 50/50 chance at best that they honor it.

Service is not about the mistake. It is about the solution. It is about actually trying to fix an issue that your customer is facing. They made no offer to transfer my reservation to another property. No offer to make up for this failure. Then they treated a simple refund as a courtesy when I've had to cancel my vacation and burned an entire day driving along with gas costs....all because the only thing that needs to work at their front-desk-less property (the keypad) is broken and apparently they have no staff in a 100 mile radius.

They did say sorry multiple times and promised several times that the person fixing it was mere minutes away....so I guess that's...

I booked a while ago and there were very few reviews, but the price was literally half to a third of the price as other places to stay in the area. When it was time for my trip I saw all of the negative reviews, and was honestly worried, I'd come for a work conference, and was afraid I wouldn't be able to sleep.

I will note, I stayed Sunday night- Friday morning, I would assume the quietest nights, but I was able to sleep, the bars were a bit loud, but I put in earplugs, that were provided, and set the AC fan to ON instead of Auto, that created white noise, and slept just fine.

The sheets were a little tattered, there was some wonkiness, like the end table lamps that were so large and heavy that the night stand shelf was bending, the mattress only sits about 3in off the ground, it would have been nice to have a little light in or by the closet, and one by the kitchenette area.

It's definitely not for all people, it's on a busy street, in the center of the night life area of San Diego, the roads are shut down with barriers at night, in the morning the restaurant/bars are still cleaning, and doors in the hall are propped open with garbage cans, one morning there was a garbage can in the elevator, there is a serious amount of homelessness in the area, and there were some folks sleeping in the street and picking through the trash in front of the bars in the morning, but they were all pleasant, no one was panhandling.

However, it's also walking distance to the convention center, trolleys, the bayfront, baseball stadium, and in the heart of the Gaslamp District. The room had a little kitchenette, free access to a laundry room, and they provided some laundry detergent pods, so it was nice to do laundry before I left, and head home with a suitcase full of clean clothes. Honestly, had the sheets not been tattered, I probably would have given it a 5 star review. Remember, other places in the area are at least...