We arrived late Friday night and were told there was a problem with our room, althought we had validated our booking the day before. We were mooved to a lesser quality hotel, thus not being with our friends. The hotel was even smaller (no air con, no bath tub ect)but cheaper. But Laris Hotel debited the full price from my credit card without asking. And they won't hear about a partial refund.
It is to easy to overbook the hotel and then move people around to cheaper places.

We stayed at the Laris as it was the only room we could find for the Saturday of the EU football finals in Madrid. We paid over $200 US for a dingy room that, fortunately, was missing the dragon. The neighborhood left a lot to be desired, but the Laris is pretty well situated if you want to be in the center of Madrid - which we did. The desk clerk was polite and helpful and I didn't feel like I wasn't safe in the hotel. But, given a choice, I would not stay here again--even though the normal rates are quite reasonable.

My partner and I stayed at the Laris for our first 2 nights in Madrid and could not wait to leave. We booked using hotels.com so we got a good deal, but I would have been extremely annoyed if we'd paid full price.
Whilst the location looks great on a map, in reality there are prostitutes everywhere and as soon as you step out of the hotel you can smell urine (we actually saw several people urinating in the street: under cars, against walls, in doorways - you name it). There is also a lot of grafitti, but this is true of Madrid as a whole.
The hotel itself also had a funny smell in reception, not quite sure what it was. It smelt like some kind of cleaning product which should be a good thing but it was very overpowering and gave me a headache whenever we passed through!
Our room and the corridors were also very scruffy (lots of peeling paint etc.): this hotel is in serious need of doing up. I would certainly not say it is a 3 star - this rating was obviously awarded to the hotel a while ago. Also, there were no English channels on the TV. The only bonus was that our room was very big.
The biggest problem we encountered was that despite booking a double room we were allocated a twin; when we asked to move we were told that there were no double rooms left. The staff weren't very helpful, in fact they were quite abrupt and rude.
I'm sure there are worse places to stay but I would definitely not return to the Laris.

Single male traveller in July 08, arrived in the area and the taxi driver said to me to be careful in this area. I thought "Yeah, I'm a big boy.." but after being grabbed by prostitutes and chased down the street by someone trying to sell me drugs, after 2 days of my 7 day stay, I was straight back to the airport and home to London. Hotel was OK, small pokey room but that was fine.. well-lit, air con, clean bathroom. Nice breakfast. Wish I had paid that bit more.....