Sea View Inn at the Beach

Worse hotel experience of my life, locked out of room all night. Motel owner is now calling and threatening to sue if I do not remove my negative review on Trip*Advisor. Below is a copy of my post. One of the worst hotel experiences I've ever had. For the third year in a row I booked three nights over new years. I will never return. Sea View is slightly cheaper than others in the area but its not worth saving a few bucks. To begin the room was dirty and the heater was terrible. Foreign hairs peppered the the bed and were stuck to the bathroom walls. But you get what you pay for. The risk in staying at this roach motel came out when I locked myself out of the room around 11:30pm without a cell phone, wallet, or jacket. After walking up and down the main street for half an hour looking for help, a sympathetic bouncer outside of a nearby bar let me use his cell phone to call the hotel. To my surprise there was no emergency contact number for any problems after 11pm. Yes, the sign on Sea View's office clearly says their hours are from 7am - 11pm. But in all my travels I have never experienced an independent hotel or motel without any options for guest emergencies. In the end I had to sit in front of a friend's house freezing until he and his wife got home early that morning. A few hours later I got a second key from Sea View reception and got into my room. The clerk verified that there was no after hours phone number and that I should call 911 in the event of an emergency. BUT the part that made this my WORST hotel experience ever was the way I was treated by one of the owners - James McCleary - when I called to explain what had happened after checking out. Three minutes into my explanation I was shocked when James raised his voice and started on a delusional rant about how people like me were the problem with America. He went on to say that despite his motel having no available human contact after 11pm that I was the problem, that I needed to own up to my mistake, and that by even discussing this with him was a reflection of how America is going down the drain. I responded that this was not a political debate and, that I was part of a large group who has been staying at his hotel for three years. He clearly did not care about our future business. Now screaming and enraged, James continued to rant about entitlements, the US debt crisis, the Obama administration and how people like me were destroying America. I eventually had to hang up the phone. James - you can be sure that my large group of friends and I will never be a burdan on you or your motel again.

Because what you'll find looks nothing like the photos on here.We weren't asking much; just a semi-romantic hotel near LAX to celebrate our anniversary the night before my husband flew off to Madrid for a month. So we booked a standard room at the Sea View Inn. The photos on the website made the rooms look clean, modern and suggested, more or less, that we'd enjoy an unobstructed ocean view. Instead, we found worn, dirty carpet and a worn, lumpy mattress, located in a decrepit mid-century motel building. Their other properties, next door and across the street, looked much nicer and perhaps were the source of the photos they posted on [...]. They also appeared to have a full-on ocean view, as opposed to the step-onto-the-balcony-overlooking-noisy-Highland-Avenue-and-peer-over-and-around-the-rooftops-across-the-street-and-you'll-see-the-Pacific view that we had. When we attempted to complain, the guy at the desk gave us a verbal "talk to the hand." "Nope, we are fully booked," he said. "But the view..." "Can you see the ocean at all? Well, there you go."He proceeded to give us a condescending lecture about hotel rates in Manhattan Beach, and 'what did we expect for 175 dollars a night?"Well, I'm not sure. But I do know it wasn't dirty carpet, a lumpy mattress and a rundown motel. Next time, I'll stay at the Custom Hotel LAX for less, and drive the five minutes into Manhattan Beach if I feel like spending time there.

We really did like being so close to the ocean, but our room was very tiny and did not have a front window to look out (right on the busy road). The room was very clean and maintained. The room was not in a good location on the property and was very small. The night we checked in, the room only had partial electricity (due to a transformer problem). This was fixed the next day. Also, you have to check out hair dryers and there are no coffee machines in the room (no coffee in the hotel office either).