First of all, I should preamble this by saying that I originally posted the review below on The Knot in December of 2013. Since then, the company has reported that review twice, trying to have it taken down, unsuccessfully. So in addition to my general dissatisfaction with their services and professionalism indicated below, it also seems they will try to come after you for that dissatisfaction. I've gone through Yelp's review guidelines in detail and this review does not conflict with or go against any of them, so without further ado:
One of my closest friends hired him for her wedding, as he is the most popular Russian-American DJ in the area. I quickly followed suit. Biggest mistake of the wedding. I'll be honest, my expectations were low. A DJ that operates out of his apartment in Russian Brooklyn didn't exactly give me high hopes. When I met him however, I was pleasantly surprised. Here was a guy that appeared to be a genuine businessman. Friendly enough, nice enough, explained everything clearly, had all his metaphorical ducks in a row. So we decided to book his services for the wedding, still 9 months out. At this point we were also in the process of looking for a photographer/videographer, and Pushkin had several that he worked with and that we could book through his company. So we took out a contract for DJ services with the option to extend the services to photo/video. We put down the deposit (1/3 of the DJ contract) and continued shopping around for photo/video. About 3 weeks later, we found a photo/video company that gave us a great package so we took it. I immediately contacted Pushkin to let him know that we would not be needing photo/video services. Lo and behold, he tells me I am unable to cancel these services, despite the fact that our (unsigned, mind you) contract stated that we took out an option. When I tried to reason with him, he turned into exactly the type of person I had expected him to be in the first place: a grimy, unprofessional, manipulative, and flaky cheat. Despite my attempts to reason with him, he refused to accept the "cancellation." He even tried to charge me $1000 for the cancellation. I decided to just walk away. It wasn't worth the hassle to be honest...especially considering how much he wanted to "cancel" services that hadn't even been booked yet. I am honestly so grateful, even despite the monetary loss (we didn't get our deposit back), that we ended up cancelling his services. He did end up playing at my friends wedding, and even tried to scheme (large sums of) additional money from them on the DAY OF the wedding. Fortunately they were smarter than to give in to his unfounded demands. He is a self-involved prima-donna, and I would highly advise against booking with him. read more