The technology for dealing with franchising’s smell has changed.
Steps 1-2-3:
- tradename system executives,
- national franchisor-dominated associations (IFA, AAFD, CFA, FCA, FANZ) + franchise bar, and
- Blue MauMau.org.
Musing: #3 works on the rhetorical principle that Thomas Carlyle suggests…
If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about it; for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else.
…and John Kenneth Galbraith adds…
People need to think of themselves as unmanaged, independent and free, if they are to be controlled with maximum success.
…and more colloquially still:
Bullshit baffles brains: A deception. To put on such a good show the inspector is so impressed (s)he won’t bother with a detailed check or to question anything.
FranchiseFool.com 
That’s not Bull Shit on Blue Mau mau — that’s ELEPHANT DUNG from ignoring The Elephant in the Room. I remember that the words “churn and churning” automatically qualified my posts for disposal in the
Ranter’s Soapbox! And then, I was completely censored and blocked from posting or reading Blue Mau Mau. Don likes to keep his “token franchisee(s)” ignorant and misinformed but hasn’t been completely successful. There is, of course, no ad traffic from franchisees!
http://thegreatfranchisingrobbery.blogspot.com —Google up “franchise fraud churning regulation” and always look to Franchise Fool and Wikidfranchise.com for the truth!—–
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Blocked?
Banned?
“Token franchisees”?
OMG
SURELY that sort of thing doesn’t happen on the web.
Hey, Carol, you’re welcome to rant as often and as long as you wish at franchise-forum.com
Unless, of course, you get banned. 😉
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Thank you, Tom, for the invitation. Your website Franchise
Forum.com and Les Stewart’s Franchise Fool and Wikifranchise.org are the only franchise sites that really try to disclose how and why so many of these franchises SUCK because of the opportunism that is enabled under ineffective and dishonest regulation of the franchise model of doing business.
The other sites like Blue Mau Mau want to sell franchising to the public!
and want to hide the known great risk of failure from those in the public who will buy franchises in the future.
The qualifications to be a franchisor were set very LOW under the law in order to grow franchising in our economy — a goal of punlic policy assets
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Franchisors have been subsidized by the rules and regulations of Federal and State Governments in order to encourage franchising in the economy.
Unfortunately, because ANY small startup retail business suffers from odds of 50% failure sometime in the first five years, and franchises are no exception, it appears that public policy has been developed to hide the great risk from new buyers of retail franchises.
Isn’t it truly malicious to encourage Mom and Pop prospective franchisees to borrow against their home equity and/or 401’s or 403’s to buy a job without informing them of this great risk of failure?
Read Franchise-Forum.com !!
http://thegreatfranchisingrobbery.blogspot,com
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Graeme Samuel [ACCC] comes upon a young girl child playing in the dirt outside her parent’s franchise. He asks what she is making.
She quietly responds; ‘I’m making a man’.
He asks what she is using to make the man.
She turns and holds his gaze and quietly responds; ‘Dog siht’
He arrogantly responds; ‘I suppose that is supposed to be me?’
She keeps working and quietly responds; ‘Nope – not enough dog siht.’
Sometimes we hint and sometimes we scream but we should never let an opportunity be missed when telling the truth.
There is not enough siht in this world when espousing franchising danger. But it is a case of working with available resources, in this example the ethics of Samuel and the existence Franchise Fool, or else we minimize reach.
We cannot beat their dollars but there is no way rotten franchisors can beat franchisee volumn. The issue as I see it is not any franchising website as much as it is the lazy or destroyed people not telling the truth and exposing the lies.
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Ray! Prospective franchisees don’t understand (before the sale) that they have no Political Action Committee (PAC) to protect their interests and that they are merely calculated resources under existing regulatory policy to grow the franchisors’ EBITDA’s and perpetuate their systems and profits.
After the sale, and after franchisees have signed the malicious take-it-or-leave it one-sided contracts, it is too late. Contract law and the need for “certainty” in contracts acts as a noose and they are left hanging in the wind or quite dead on the ground.
Few have the money or the heart left to protest and they fade away into silence. The few who make it to court are generally also left hanging in the wind —-the process is just longer!
When all three branches of government unite to promote franchising, to indenture franchisees, and to hide the inherent risk of buying any franchise through the process of dishonest and inadequate pre-sale disclosure, i.e. “flawed regulatory policy” we few who try to tell the truth do knock our heads against brick walls!
http://thegreatfranchisingrobbery.blogspot.com
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I thought this was cute from Corbin Williston at BMM;
> Courts will normally not re-write a contract. They will enforce it according to its terms, unless those are contrary to public policy.
> Unconscionability is normally measured by the status of the parties at the time of entering into the contract–not at the time one party seeks to avoid its obligations on grounds that the contract has become too onerous.
> Franchise Agreements are not consumer contracts. On a routine basis, courts have held that they are contracts between two business parties of equal bargaining power and sophistication. This is a legal fiction, but one which is very different from the consumer contracts that most first-time franchisees are accustomed to.
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Yes! When public policy is developed to condone trickery and deceit in the sale of franchises to the public by means of ineffective and dishonest regulation, or NO regulation, etc.. the courts have to redefine “unconscionability” and “good faith” and “consumer” statutes to support “dishonest” public policy without themselves becoming dishonest!
The result, of course, is that case law has been made that invites fraud and tort against prospective buyers of franchises that is being brought to the attention of the courts here and in your country. The Courts can’t completely ignore the outcry of franchisees who feel that they have been cheated and defrauded by their franchisors. There has to be an appearance that the law serves the ends of fairness and justice!
At least there are a few cases, i.e. in the US like Peaberry Coffee and the Remand in the Denver District Court that poses the question as to whether or not mandated disclosure protects franchisors and their attorneys who prepare the disclosure material from “silent fraud.”
It really distresses me that the Congress (through ignorance or complicity?) has made our VETS and their families targets of the franchisors who will use them to sustain the franchisors’ EBITDA’s in bad and good times. These VETS and their families suddenly become “sophisticated” investors under case law made by the courts! How can this be justified.. This is certainly “legal fiction.”
Looks like whole business securitizations of franchisors will again be wonderful opportunity for PE to make profits at the expense of the franchisees who form the basis of the franchise pyramids and who are not given fair disclosure of the risk under current law, process and procedure before they make their investments.
htp://thegreatfranchisingrobbery.blogspot.com
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The CNBC-Zarco Cold Stone scenario as described on Blue Mau illustrates how this exploitive model of doing business, franchising, and regulatory policy work together to protect the Franchise SYSTEM. Those franchisees who fail within franchise systems and are churned and turned and/or declared dead are generally silenced and fade away into obscurity. This, of course, is comtemplated in the dishonest federal regulatory policy governing the sale of franchises to the innocent public!
Cecile Rolle has been declared a loser by the courts and by Cold Stone!
How convenient that it is made to seem that franchisees can’t confront the system, the franchisor, in any public manner without also puting their own assets at risk from unfavorable publicity.
Zarco, who knows that public policy protects the SYSTEM and the surviving franchisees within the system, knows that in this case, he can’t lose. He will be representing both the SYSTEM and the surviving franchisees — who comprise the system — by defending the image of Cold Stone against the truth (all of the failing stores and the “kickbacks”) told in the CNBC documentary by silencing CNBC. .
Blue Mau Mau readers or the Editorial Staff don’t ask if CNBC will fold or continue to air this documentary? Why not? Instead they divert attention by talking about “ZARCO’s conflict of interest.”
The public doesn’t understand that these CHAIN FRANCHISES are owned by Mom and Pops and have no idea of the legal structure of the business model that enables franchisors to survive even as 50%, more or less, of their founding franchisees are losing everything
If the public really listened to the Documentary and understood the comments and the realities, they would be more apt to try to help the franchisees of Cold Stone instead of boycotting them, wouldn’t they?
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I read Blue Mau Mau on the Proxy Engine. I cannot comment on Blue Mau Mau because my computer is blocked from this site. This is frustrating –especially when I am sometimes denigrated, by name, in the postings.
It appears that those who post on Blue Mau Mau are dedicated to talking about “good” and “bad” franchisors which does in itself hide the fact that ALL franchisors have the ability under the FTC Rule governing the sale of franchises to become predators and CHURN and encroach on their franchisees, as becomes necessary to themselves survive in the market place.
Blue Mau Mau backs away from explaining that ANY franchise is a great risk bedause of the dishonest regulation of the sale of franchises and the grim odds of 50% failure within the first five years, and talks only about the SBA failure rate, etc.. when talking about failures in franchise systems.
Blue Mau Mau supports the ugly status quo and the majority who profit from the ugly status quo of dishonest and ineffective regulation of the sale of franchises to the innocent public.
Neither Blue Mau Mau’s editor, nor its regular posters ever talk about the FLAW in the FTC Rule that enables the exploitation of franchisees cheap labor and cheap venture capital to grow the franchisors’ EBITDA’s. .
The SBA failure rate is not the true rate of failure because it doesn’t reflect the failure of home equity loans, etc.. used to finance franchises. The SBA failure rate doesn’t reflect the thousands and thousands of failed franchisees who continue to pay on startup debt to save themselves from bankruptcy and the loss of their homes used as collateral to back their personal guarantees.
While telling some truth but not all of the truth is not the same as telling a lie, it is also not the same thing as telling the truth. Blue Mau Mau does enable those who are complicit in hiding the risk of buying a franchise, and resisting any talk of new regulation, to take center stage on Blue Mau Mau and muddy the waters.
“Decay” is more often to be found in muddy waters!
http:thegreatfranchisingrobbery.blogspot.com
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Over at Blue Mau Mau, they muddy the waters by debating the ethics of Attorney Zarco, who certainly didn’t become rich and famous because he is stupid! CNBC isn’t stupid either.
Are the attorneys over at Blue Mau Mau trying to divert attention from the fact that a big network announced that it was going to go behind the scenes in franchising and report the truth but now has backed down? Has a lawsuit been filed? Will this documentary ever appear again? Will CNBC explain who has control over the free speech of this network? What kind of a case could Zarco make against NBC?
How can you report the truth of what goes on “Behind the Counter” unless you report the truth about the FLAW in the FTC Rule that enables franchisors like Coldstone, The UPS Store, Quiznos, Curves, and too many others to CHURN and TURN and exploit their franchisees to perpetuate their own survivals –and, with apparent immunity under the law?
Isn’t this really the issue that they skirt while stirring muddy waters over at Blue Mau Mau?
http://thegreatfranchisingrobbery.blogspot.com
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Stirring muddy waters over at Blue Mau Mau. It is the attorneys who get in and stir the waters and add more mud all of the time to the waters. The smoke screen is very effective and there are never any actual lies and always food for thought! I am grateful for the proxy engine that allows me to read the comments.
Can you wash your hands clean in muddy waters?
The BLUE MAU MAU attorneys have these conversations about the law and the merits of the individual cases and the incompetence of the “other”attorneys, etc. on a stage where the attorneys KNOW that the FTC has already determined that there is NO private right of action for violation of the FTC Rule that governs not only the sale of franchises to the public, but also the “unilateral” contractual relationship of the franchisor and the franchisee over the long term of the franchise agreement.
The attorneys are very careful not to explain the legal ramifications of the FTC Rule and the actual franchise agreements to non-attorneys. It is the ABA, of course, who has enabled the long-term existence of the FLAW in the Disclosure Rule because they have been careful not to force the matter of premeditated and hidden “churning” to the attention of the courts or the regulators.
Franchisees are almost always dead in the water because all three branches of government are united in hiding the essential risk of buying ANY franchise and there is no recourse for those who take the known and undisclosed risk and fail.
There is no such proposition as a “good franchisor” and a “bad franchisor” or a “flawed concept” in the law surrounding franchising and this idea that there IS just hides the truth that all franchisors — even those who have had good results for the majority of their franchisees –can become “bad” when their EBITDAs are threatened and they feel the need to exploit their franchisees to themselves survive.
The Lie of the FTC Rule in presale disclosure and the protection it gives the franchisors to churn and encroach is the elephant in the room that nobody talks about! Is the durability of franchising dependent on ineffective and dishonest federally mandated disclosure?
Federal law, the FTC Rule, does preempt state law governing the sale of franchises to the public and it appears that franchisors are never guilty of fraudulent inducement to contract under federal law and that there is no such proposition in the law as a “flawed concept” as long as the concept that is sold is disclosed under the provisions of the FTC Rule.
Whether or not state laws apply to disputes arising in the relationship once it is formed is another subject matter that can be studied in evolving case law.
http://thegreatfranchisingrobbery.blogspot.com
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Blue MauMau has been hacked again so it must be doing something right. Australian franchisee websites, ‘James Master Lies’, ‘Jim’s: The Truth’, ‘Bakers Delight Lies’ and ‘Cheesecake Shop Lies’ were all taken over but are slowly returning to their original authors.
‘Australian Franchising Scams’ on facebook has been continually under attack and I’ve been blocked for a few days while content is removed. I have appealed on the basis that the content is is true and accurate, on record, in the public interest nad not in breach of facebook community standards or anyone’s copyright. But it is just too easy to attack a facebook page with little right of reply.
I and some of my associates have also been subject to bogus emails being sent out in our names demanding money from friends and associates. Sadly, no money has arrived.
There has also been the unusual attempts to intimidate with various threats all of which received an unprintable response.
Anyway; it seems obvious that social media influences rogue franchisors.
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Interesting, so franchising has a 50-50 risk; therefore, it really is important for people to know at least the basics of business management . I think if you have researched well on what product to franchise then you may have a higher percentage of profit.
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