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Upper East Side Matchmaker Gets Stuck in Elevator, Threatens to Sue Apt. Building

By DNAinfo Staff on November 4, 2010 7:38am

Matchmaker Janis Spindel, seen here at the Authors Night 2010 at the East Hampton Library this summer, lost $250,000 thanks to her apartment building's elevator.
Matchmaker Janis Spindel, seen here at the Authors Night 2010 at the East Hampton Library this summer, lost $250,000 thanks to her apartment building's elevator.
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Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images

By Jennifer Glickel

DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

UPPER EAST SIDE — An Upper East Side matchmaker says she lost a client and a quarter of a million dollars thanks to her apartment building’s faulty elevator, the New York Post reported.

Janis Spindel, who charges anywhere between $50,000 and $500,000 to her clients for her matchmaking services, claims she was off to meet with a successful divorcee who had flown in from Oregon — until she got trapped in the elevator in her building at 110 East End Avenue, the paper reported.

Instead of waiting patiently for Spindel, who was running late for their breakfast meeting at the Regency Hotel, the billionaire client left before she finally arrived.

"He is super successful — a 6-foot-2, retired entrepreneur who is 48 and divorced," Spindel told the Post.

"He's a really, really awesome guy and I didn't get to meet with him."

Spindel said she was not only concerned about the $10,000 an hour that she claims she lost due to the elevator ordeal, but also for the well-being of herself and her fellow tenants.

"There was no air in the elevator. I'm claustrophobic and it was terrifying."

"My heart was racing and I was hyperventilating. Many of the residents here are elderly — they could die in there," she told the Post.

Spindel, who has had it with the elevator and is moving to a new apartment, is asking the landlord of the building to break her lease and pay for her moving expenses. She says she'll sue the landlord for the fee she lost from her client while stuck in the elevator if he doesn't comply, the Post reported.

Landlord Jacob Weinreb has little sympathy for Spindel's woes, telling the paper that his building has a 24-hour contract to repair the elevators and any problems are rectified right away.

"This is blackmail. This woman wants out of her lease, and we don't work with blackmail," Weinreb told the Post.