La Controra Hostel Rome

I booked this hostel months in advance. La Controra charged my credit card and then proceeded to «bait and switch» (that is, they take your money, apologise that the hostel is full and then say that they’ll make alternative arrangements for you)
These alternative arrangements will be for places that are half the price you pay for La Controra, in the worst places in the city.
The hostel staff then told us that they weren’t sure where we would stay, but that this would be arranged by the end of the day.
This did not happen. At midnight of the first day, we were told that no accommodation had been sought out for us. We were homeless.
The next day, we were advised by the hostel that they had made arrangements for us at Hostel Beautiful near Termini in Rome.
This is where it takes a turn for the worst (at this point, the past 24 hours had been highly stressful and inconvenient for all of us as we were asked to check in and check out four times, transport all our luggage (8 large suitcases) to different locations, were not told whether we had a place to stay until the very last minute, etc).
Hostel Beautiful was a horrific and traumatic experience to say the least. Please look up this hostel on Unilocal.You will find that all reviews talk about the bed bugs, stains, inappropriate staff, etc. It is hell on earth.
La Controra has no hesitations doing this to their customers. When asked why they put us to this hostel, the response was — «if you didn’t like Hostel Beautiful, then you shouldn’t have paid them»
Be careful booking with this hostel, they’ll take your money but they won’t have your back when things go wrong.
Try for Hostel Rome des Artistes instead, they’re honest and reliable with amazing facilities and rooms.

Of all the hostels I’ve stayed at in the last several months, I’d call this one just OK. The rooms were clean and spacious, many of which have their own bathrooms. If you’ve been travelling in 8-​bed dorms for a long time, having your own bathroom is really quite a luxury. Unfortunately, the shower temperature was horrible. It was either hot or cold, rarely in between. I tried out two bathrooms and both had this problem.
Overall, I liked the setup. If you’re on the main floor, you have to walk past the common room and kitchen to get to your room. This makes for a decently sociable feel. The kitchen is well stocked pots and pans, so there’s usually quite a few people cooking at night.
My main complaint here was the staff was… odd. There were two young girls who worked and lived in the hostel which is pretty normal, but they weren’t sociable at all and were loud and obnoxious. They listened to soap operas all day and night long on high volume which could be heard throughout the hostel. They also cooked elaborate meals every night, making it difficult for other people to use the kitchen. The cleaning guy was equally as intrusive and odd. He cleaned the place around 3pm or 4pm every day, kicking everybody out of the common rooms. Since this is right when tired tourists start coming back to their hostels for the day, I found it really inconvenient. To make it worse, in the middle of his cleaning job, he’d flop down on the bean bag chairs and talk on his phone for a half an hour.
That said, the place is quite clean and you get a good room. If you’re travelling with a group of three it’s an ideal hostel. Warning: I definitely wouldn’t recommend it for solo travelers since most people seem to come here in groups and aren’t particularly social, in my experience.