Booked through Venere.com, I have had untold problems with this website i.e. often you get to the hotel and they won't take cards, but I often have to book to travel to a shoe fair in Milan and this site is the only one with any availability.
Anyway, I am a woman, I was travelling on my own, I arrived at 10pm at night into what seemed like a pub bar, lots of noise and people, drinking, blaring tv set.
I immediately noticed the 'no cards' sign. Apparently the machine was broken. My room wasn't ready either. I was too tired to go anywhere else, even though I didn't feel safe.
He says he doesn't take cards yet he has card paraphenalia (such as an Amex branded hotel business card holder), everywhere.
So I thought, ok, I'll stay one night and get the hell out.
To be fair, the room was fine, very clean, new furniture, no complaints. there I used the hotel wifi too and it was very good.
Noise was not good, not good at all, because my room opened out directly onto the 'pub-like' breakfast area. I felt like I was living in a seedy bar. I worked until 2am rather than get frustrated trying to sleep.
On check out the following morning ( I was booked for three nights), this caused untold grief, screaming on the phone etc. Had to pay cash, couldn't wait to get out of there - think I got off lightly compared to some!

We did not have much choice when we were looking for accommodation in Milan recently. There was a Furniture Show being held on the same weekend that we were there, so we had slim pickings of hotels. The Arco Hotel is not that close to the centre of Milan, as it states on their website. It is about a 15 minute bus ride.
We arrived at night, with printed evidence of a confirmed booking.
They did not have a room ready and were not sure if they had a room vacant. Eventually, they decided they did have a room, but it would have to be cleaned first - an inconvenience when we were tired after an 8 hour train trip from Paris. The room we were given was dreadful. It smelt so strongly of cigarette smoke, that we had to sleep with the window open, in April! We asked for another room, but were rudely told that there were none available. The size of the room and bathroom was ok by italian standards, and we were given large bath towells.
The staff were unfriendly and unwilling to help with requests.
Breakfast was reasonable, croissants with jam, bread rolls, coffee.
On the front door of the hotel, there is a sign stating acceptance of credit cards, eg. MC, Visa, Amex etc. though upon us leaving, they refused to accept credit card payment. We were very insistant and told them that we either pay by card or we don't pay!
They then reluctantly accepted our Visa card.
If staying in Milan, do a little research, and don't make the mistake of staying at The Arco Hotel.
Melbourne, Australia

We stayed at the hotel for 3 nights. The price was low considering Milan hotel prices. The owner couple didn't speak any italian, their son did. The son was the one who was sitting in the reseption. He was watching porno from tv or playing computer games all the time. He wasn't too polite. The room didn't have towels. It was ok clean. the walls were paper, you could hear everything thought them. there was also someone all the time smoking under our window and the smoke came in to the room. The hotel is situated in a good area. I wouldn't recommend it to women travelling on their own.

If you are a girl don't stay there alone, if at all! One of the hotel workers (Mario) was a total pervert! We had a reservation for 4 girls but we ended up having 5 girls. We asked if we could get another room to split our group or if it was okay for us 5 to stay in the 4 persons room. Mario said they had no more openings so then we'd have to stay 5 in the room but we were fine with that. We had 5 girls and he was the night shift guy. We bought one shot of alcohol and that's it. Then he knew and he called our room and told us to go downstairs to hang out with him but we said no, we're tired. Then he came up to our room and sat down in the room and wouldn't leave even after we repeatedly asked him to go. He kept trying to lure one of our girls out by jokingly saying things like, "come in my room and we can sleep in a different way together" or he'd pull at her arm toward the hall way. It was very uncomfortable and we just wanted to sleep after this craziness but he refused to leave and we didn't know where else we could go. Finally he brought a friend in and told the friend that I wanted to kiss him and I yelled out "NO I DONT" and another girl repeated again, "can you just please leave. We just want to go to sleep. We have to wake up early. All five of us are staying in this room. No one is leaving so can you please just leave us alone already!" Then Mario's friend pulls him out of our room saying that he thinks that we want to be left alone. Then Mario got upset and as he was leaving our room, he says, "because you have one extra person, I charge you 120 euros extra." We didn't care about the money, just our safety so we put a night stand to block the door. He heard what we were doing so he came back and told us not to block the door "for security reasons." So we dragged it back to its place and when he left, I picked it up and slowly put it down in front of the door again. Then we were talking about it, the 5 of us, and we were in room 215, right above the floor you check-in at. He called up to our room again and I picked up. He said, "if you girls don't shut up, then I'll kick you out of the hotel" and he hung up before I could apologize or even say anything. In the morning, we told the morning shift guy what happened when he tried to charge us the 120 fee and he didn't seem to care and we all argued until we threatened to call the police, U.S. Consulate, and our Study Abroad Program director. After that, he didn't charge us the extra but told us that hostelworld[...] will charge us the extra fee and to take it up with them. We then told the site what happened and they said that they didn't want to get involved and we needed to resolve it ourselves or get a lawyer and they didn't post up our review that was mainly warning other females not to stay there alone, if at all.