Failing franchises Posted by Matthew

Hi Matthew,

Although I have no problem carefully calling out a scummy franchisor, one has to be careful in these litigious days.

Just delisting them makes a statement.

Joel Libava

Matthew

I must agree with Andy and Joel when they ask you to be wary. This is a very difficult topic to manage in an unbiased way, purely because whichever comments you receive, they can only ever be a matter of opinion usually based on personal disappointment. If a franchise is attracting bad press, and it is a case of mis-selling and false promises then fine, but in my experience there is a "rose tinted glasses" view frrom many prospective franchisees who are captivated by the concept of owning and running their own business and forget that they actually have to work at it for it to be successful. Perhaps a solution would be to provide feedback to the actual franchisor from your site but to keep the complaint anonymous so as not to jeopardise the position of the franchisee. I have considerable experience in Customer Service and the management of client expectations and consequently I feel that genuine complaints need to be aired in a manner which enables any conflict to be resolved. What should be avoided is the "he said - you said" scenario which achieves little apart from animosity. Personally, I see no problem in receiving comments which have come to you Matthew from any franchisee with which I am involved so that I may the chance to address where we may have let a franchisee down.

Seasons greetings

JT

Hi Paul

We do have the forum where posts can be made giving favourable or unfavourable views on particular franchises and franchising in general.  There are also comment systems for all articles & press releases on the main site.  What would not be possible is to add comment systems on the full page listings for each franchise as they are paying clients of mine and as such we need to offer them some protection from possibly malicious postings and ensure that any bad reports are thoroughly investigated.  It is not unknown for competitors to bad mouth each other and care must be taken to ensure balanced views are shown.

With reference to you saying "when up and running I know a few of us who would wish to register our lose of money"

The forum can be used to discuss anything you want and if needed then I am happy to invite a franchisor here to give their own side also.    What I am wary of is going down the route of UK Business Forums where they were threatened with legal action and had to close down their franchise forums, and also, of turning into a franchise bashing site when actually we are here primarily to promote franchising.  NetFrog is open for all types of discussion though so feel free to post your experiences :)

BTW - I am still considering opening a section for franchises I do not think are good opportunities but it is something I am going to have a long hard think about.  There are many ways to approach it and it is not something I will be jumping head first in to.  It could simply be an area dedicated to what franchising is not, for instance I have seen several "franchises" recently who I do not regard as franchises at all and neither do I think they are good opportunities.

Example:  Website X registered it's domain name in July 2008.  By September 2008 it  was live and franchising itself as an opportunity where you can earn £120,000 a year.  Website X is not even generating this itself but is selling franchises for £25,000 each and advertising on all the major franchise portals.  Is Website X following the proper franchise model?  No. Would I recommend Website X?  No.  Would I advertise their franchise here?  No.  Is it worth warning people that spending £25,000 on a Website X franchise is a really bad idea?  Maybe.

It's food for thought and once I have my to-do list cleared a bit I am going to revisit and think some more about what, if anything, could be done.