What Happened to Appliances Connection?

The internet is filled with appliance retailers. It’s an industry known for fierce competition, and it’s not uncommon for fledgling retailers to fail or be acquired by larger fish before making a name for themselves.

What is unusual is when a large fish goes belly-up abruptly as in the case of Appliances Connection.

Newsweek named Appliances Connection one of the best online shops in 2024, but on February 29th, Appliances Connection’s parent company, Polished (NYSE: POL), announced its intention to file for bankruptcy as reported by MarketWatch, and appliancesconnection.com stopped working on March 1st.

The result has been nothing short of a nightmare for Appliances Connection customers who have been navigating an unusual situation where they have paid for appliances that were either never shipped, or were shipped and are now stuck in transit.

Users on Reddit have reported being contacted by various shipping companies and being informed all undelivered merchandise needs to be returned to its origin, presumably because Appliances Connection is unable to pay the associated shipping fees which can often cost hundreds of dollars for large appliances.

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From Reddit

It’s not just new customers who have been negatively affected by this closure. Existing customers are now without any post-sale service, warranty service, or the ability to return defective products, and in some cases are stuck wondering if the financing plan they had set up with Appliances Connection will still be honored.

What Went Wrong with Appliances Connection?

Polished has been relatively silent on what happened and what will happen to Appliances Connection and its customers. Currently, Polished has just a simple press release on its website regarding the intention to file for bankruptcy with no mention of Appliances Connection.

Notice from Polished.com regarding bankruptcy

To say it hasn’t always been smooth sailing since Polished acquired Appliances Connection for at least $60 million would be an understatement.

At the time of the acquisition in June of 2021, the CEO of Appliances Connection was its founder Albert Fouerti. Just two months later, he became the CEO of Polished with his brother Elie joining as vice president.

By October 2022, Fouerti, along with his brother and CFO Maria Johnson, were forced out of Polished after an internal investigation found he had charged the company $800K in unrelated expenses. Shortly after his departure and as a direct result of the unrelated charges, Fouerti became locked in a legal battle with Polished which resulted in him paying $3.7 million in damages.

Throughout the investigation, the Fouerti brothers were also Polished’s Brooklyn-based landlords after Albert Fouerti relocated the company to a building their real-estate conglomerate owned in New York. This was after he allegedly rendered the former St. Louis headquarters uninhabitable and failed to pay the monthly $45,000 rent for three consecutive months which nearly resulted in an additional $700K lawsuit.

In August 2023, just under a year after Albert Fouerti left as CEO, Polished agreed to pay $100,000 to him and his brother to settle a dispute over unpaid rent after accusing him of failing to pay $1.2 million in work done to the property.

To make matters even stranger, other companies with connections to both Fouerti and Appliances Connection seem to have been affected, such as appliance wholesaler Superior Marketing and appliance manufacturer Forte, which Fouerti filed a trademark for in 2019. Both Superior Marketing and Forte list their address as 1870 Bath Ave Ste 3, Brooklyn, NY 11214, which is also Appliances Connection’s most recent address according to the Better Business Bureau.

Google SEarch engine results page for superior marketing

Neither Superior Marketing’s nor Forte’s website has been online since March 1st, 2024. Superior Marketing seems to have still had a connection to Polished based on the title still visible in Google’s results.

While it’s unclear what took place since the August 2023 settlement, everything points to a wildly dysfunctional and mismanaged operation during the time Fouerti was CEO of Polished that likely contributed to the February 2024 bankruptcy.

Whether Appliances Connection could have been saved or not, the end result is the same. Customers are left to sort out a mess they had nothing to do with, and employees are left without a job.

What Should You Do if You Were Impacted By AppliancesConnection.com Closing?

If you are an Appliances Connection customer who has been charged for a product or service you did not receive, we recommend contacting the bank that processed your payment. Most credit card companies will be able to handle any contact with Polished for you.

In Chapter 7 Bankruptcy cases like the one Polished plans to file, assets are sold off to pay creditors which includes any and all appliances that were still at Appliances Connection, so it is unlikely your order will ever arrive.

Luckily, as we mentioned earlier, the internet is full of trustworthy retailers, many of which carry the same brands and products as Appliances Connection including The Range Hood Store, Lowe’s, and Home Depot.

If you are an affected Appliances Connection customer or have related information you would like to share, let us know in the comments!