The stay itself was OK. The upsides are the location and the breakfast. Both are great. On the negative side, the private rooms are extremely small, very hot and a bit dirty... I'm sure they're not the worst in the world, but just don't have very high expectations going in. I felt just a tad unclean the whole stay.

The real issue is with the staff. Throughout the stay they were terse at best, but they did do the minimal amount required to help the guests. However, when we checked out (at 3am, oy), we were overcharged. We argued with the desk man for about 30 minutes, but eventually just had to leave to go to the airport. We left with promises that if we contacted customer service we could be refunded. Well, after several calls, weekly emails, promises of a refund, etc, I'm still waiting. It's now March, 4 months after we stayed. Honestly, it would almost have been less frustrating to have just been told "we don't do refunds, you just got taken advantage of. sorry." than it has been to have them make these fake promises over and over again. They'll say "we just transferred the money!" but when a confirmation number, etc, is requested... they will be incommunicado for a week or so and then have some excuse about how it still needs to be sent for one reason or another.

I'm really just disgusted with the dishonesty of everyone I've spoken to since check-out on.

That being said... if you could prepay or have some sort of proof of what you owed (they didn't accept our hostelworld confirmation), the hostel itself is not the best but is fine.

We stayed in 4 different hostels on our month trip around south america and this was the worst hostel we stayed at.

It was appealing because of its location. 4 blocks from Copacabana beach, 4 blocks from the subway at a decent price, we were sold.

We arrived and the staff was very friendly but seemed to be disorganized. The lobby was full of people waiting to be checked in and checked out. We were asked to wait an hour so they could get everything organized. The took our bags for us so we could go explore for a little while.

We returned to check in and things seemed to calm down a little. I did noticed that the lobby was full of dirty sheets and towels though. We were checked in and shown to our room. We were told we had to wait till 10pm that night to get clean sheet and towels.
We stayed in a 8 room door. At the time, there was only 2 other people staying in the room, but the floors looked like they hadn't been swept or mopped for a while.
The mattresses on our beds were made of vinyl/plastic but were ripped and dirty.
We had 2 girls move into our room that night as bugs were found in the room they were staying in. The air conditioning in our room was only able to turn on between 10pm & 10am. If you wanted to stay cool during the day, you had to cram into the lobby with everyone else and try and get a seat on the bench they had.

I would classify this as a party hostel. The roof top is a bar that play loud music and offers organized rides/tours to night clubs. Even though there are signs in the hostels that you are not to drink your own alcohol, we noticed that our roommate hid some in his locked and would come in and out at night to get drinks.

Overall, if your looking for a clean, quiet place to stay, please look somewhere else.

Was travelling in South America and decided to stay in a hostel in Rio for the last 4 nights of the trip - I had called 2 WEEKS in advance and was told a private room was available for all 4 nights.
Flight was delayed and landed in Rio at 2am. Upon arrival at the hostel, the security guard and receptionist were both asleep, along with 3 others guys, who were apparently sleeping on the floor in the 'lobby', which is basically a dirty, poorly lit hallway.
The guy at the reception, who barely spoke any english, was unable to find my reservation despite giving him the name of the room I was assigned, and the name of the girl I had spoken to over the phone who had confirmed it. He knew the girl but apparently she had not confirmed anything, with the excuse that maybe it was because she was 'new'. He then said that another smaller room was available, after running off for 15min to check, and since I was exhausted and fed up of arguing with him, I accepted.
He was then unable to get the VISA machine to work, which I suspect he didnt know how in the first place. As an alternative, he said that I could leave my VISA card or my passport for him, -personally to hold- until the morning...to which I obviously refused.

He then said there was nothing he could do, and I was forced to leave and walk around Rio at 3am, with my luggage to look for a place to stay. I then found a hotel nearby, paid double what the hostel was charging and made the best decision to never to return to that hostel again.

Fun, cheap and very good location. But it could have been a lot cleaner and the air conditioner should be on during the day!!