Myself and a friend were looking for an inexpensive place to stay in Petaluma in the middle of a 10 day trip to Northern CA. We wanted a place that had internet access and were told Dollar Inn had free wi-fi. We got to the lobby and it didn't look great, smelled a bit funky but ok. While the man was running my credit card we noticed a sign with rules, one of which said, "No refunds after 15 minutes." Horrified, my friend and I (we are both women) got the key and decided to race to the room and check it out. On the way, we saw stacks of broken down mattresses, junked TV sets at the bottom of the stairs, etc. Also, the other guests looked downright frightening, . Inside the room, we took one look, saw a bathroom door with no doorknob at all, just a wooden door with a hole in it, a tub with dirty grout, etc.
We raced back to the lobby and asked for our money back. I politely told the man we were 2 women traveling alone and just didn't feel safe.
He said he didn't actually work there, was just covering for a friend and didn't know how to reverse credit card charges. We demanded to see the manager, he spoke to some on a cell phone, we couldn't tell what they were saying since it was in another language, probably Hindi, as he was Indian.
Then he came back to us and asked if we used the room. I said "We were gone 2 minutes, how could we use it?" He said no refund because we were gone more than 15 minutes! It had probably been less than 5! I asked him if he was kidding. My friend demanded to see the credit card receipt and we showed him the time stamp indicating it was less than 15. We literally had to threaten to call the police before he would reverse the charges.
When my friend tried to tell him on the way out to be careful about doing what they were doing there, he started screaming at her "Shut up! shut up! Get the hell out of here!"
Horrifying, scary! Don't stay there under any circumstances, we are positive it is just a hooker hotel.