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Online lynch mob closes in on Brooklyn kitchen & bath supplier

Friday, February 5, 2010

Hell hath no fury like a brownstoner scorned.

An online lynch mob is forming around a longtime Park Slope kitchen and bath supplier who allegedly rubbed (robbed?) a vocal segment of Brooklyn residents the wrong way.

In an epic-length post on Brownstoner, a very unhappy customer minces no words about Brian Ackerman, the proprietor of Brooklyn Kitchens and Baths:

“In the past it appears he has used deposits received from new customers to satisfy the orders for prior customers. There’s a phrase for that--it’s called a Ponzi scheme. And as we know, when the money stops coming in, the scheme collapses. With the recent downturn in the economy, the money stopped coming in.

[…] Today I attended a meeting in the office of a Manhattan law firm with the attorneys of a number of defrauded clients. The attorneys will be meeting with the Attorney General in the next couple of weeks. The objective will be to press criminal charges against Mr. Ackerman, not just civil charges.”

The commenter, who uses his full name and describes his own “close call” with the apparently defunct kitchen and bath store, implored other victims to help build the case against the store’s owner.

He also referred readers to Whybrooklynkitchens.com, a "grudge site" he started to warn other customers. One page consists solely of nightmare testimonials drawn from unhappy renovators.

The store’s own website, meanwhile, appears to have gone dark: In its place is a collection of unrelated links anchored by an erotic photo.

Meanwhile, the GoogleMaps listing for Brooklyn Kitchens and Baths serves up a festering assortment of angry customer reviews. So does Citysearch.

(On Yelp.com, a lone reviewer praises the company for coming through on a countertop. The reviewer, whose Yelp ID places him/her in San Francisco, roughly 3,000 miles from Park Slope, distinguishes his/her experience from “those terrible reviews below.” Oddly, those reviews seem to have gone the way of some customers’ money: Poof!)

We think everyone who has ever been fleeced by a contractor or supplier will appreciate this story of a community rising up in arms. Brooklyn, and particularly the Park Slope area, has a strong community identity, and this is a good example of the power that comes along with that.

We hope more Manhattan neighborhoods will take a cue from Park Slope in leveraging their collective voice to stop unscrupuous businesses.

filed under: contractor, kitchen

2:05 pm February 6, 2010 by one2one

This place used to be known as Garfield Kitchens, and when I lived in brooklyn I checked it out as a potential supplier. At the time they had just changed their name and were cagey about the circumstances. The whole place had the feel of a sinking ship.

There are similar showrooms in manhattan, with owners who don't pay their suppliers and therefore you can't get your order for weeks after they say it will arrive. They'll tell you it's the supplier and they don't know what the problem is, but trust me, the problem is that the supplier has not been paid.

Watch out for a particular place on upper park avenue and its related showroom in Noho. This is one family who has changed business names several times but continue to have a reputation for poor customer service and general shadyness.

Look out for any place that looks shabby, ill-maintained, or where employees are clearly overburdened or unhappy. Stick with the showrooms that are professional and show signs of oft-updated materials and displays.

12:26 pm February 11, 2010 by anotherbrianvictim

I hardly think Brian Ackerman's victims can be called a "lynchmob"

Your headline is sensationalist, I assume, to attract readers or because you think the situation is funny -- either way it is totally inapropriate. Lynchmobs suffer from irrational rage -- there is nothing irrational about the reactions of people who have been robbed and seek justice through the judicial system! I would think a correction (and an apology) are in order and Brian Ackerman's victims should be offended!

2:24 pm February 11, 2010 by Teri Karush Rogers

Anotherbrianvictim, the definition of a lynch mob is a group that lynches a person for some presumed offense without legal authority. In this case, because these Brooklynites (victims) are pursuing Ackerman through legal means and not doing any actual lynching, they are not, in fact, a lynch mob. The headline was meant to be a proverbial metaphor, not an offense.
Also, as we said at the end of the post, we have nothing but admiration for this example of a community banding together to pursue their rights against unscrupulous businesses.