MAACO Franchise Complaints
July 11, 2012
The Maaco franchise has an alarmingly high SBA loan default rate of 29%
Are you familiar with the Maaco franchise opportunity? Please share a comment below.
That means that Maaco franchise owners, some of whom may have collateralized their franchise loan with their house or other personal assets, were unable to repay their loans 29% of the time.
In addition, Entrepreneur reports that the total number of Precision Tune franchises has declined from 432 in 2008 to 425 in 2011, a decline of 7 franchise centers.
The Maaco Franchise has an alarmingly high failure rate of 29% for SBA-backed franchise loans
Are you familiar with the Maaco franchise opportunity?
What do you think accounts for the high SBA loan failure rates of Maaco franchise owners?
What steps should Maaco be taking to stop further franchise failures?
Please share a comment, opinion or insight below.
ARE YOU A MAACO FRANCHISE OWNER OR FORMER FRANCHISEE? ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH THE MAACO FRANCHISE OPPORTUNITY? PLEASE SHARE A COMMENT BELOW.
Tags: Maaco, Maaco franchise, Maaco complaints, automotive franchise, franchise, franchise failure rate, auto franchise, worst franchise, franchise information, unhappy franchisee
Comments
17 Responses to “MAACO Franchise Complaints”
The concept is dated and the franchisor Driven Brands / Maaco / Meineke has lost site of what the franchisors part of the deal is. Everyone I went to training with was out of business by the third year. Maaco is constantly turning over franchisees. The new start-ups fail the quickest. If you walk away the equipment is usually bought at pennies on the dollar by other Maaco franchisees. By the time you figure out how bad a deal you’ve gotten yourself into with Maaco you have generally lost everything. If you try and cut your losses Maaco will still sue you to put you out of business. They offer no expertise so when the deal goes south Maaco is just washing their hands of you. They do not have company owned stores and their operations people could not save a shop even if they ever were to try. Easier to find the next franchisee to fleece.
From the rough data I compiled while with Maaco, turnover was about a constant seventy percent 300 turnovers every 5yrs out of 425-450 shops. That is on going for about the past fifteen years give or take. It was funny Maaco’s take on things is they do not have any competition. My take Maaco does not compete there are tens of thousands of body-shops making money and hundreds of Maaco’s losing money. Their entire deal is prices that are cheap. When adjusted for inflation Maaco’s loss leader paint service in 1990 dollars is about 70.00 to paint a vehicle in 2012? When you question their operations people about basic business, marketing, pricing concepts, the overwhelming response is they do not know how it works just lower your prices and paint more vehicles???
Maaco has a few franchisees that do well most have been in business a long time and bought in for substantially less than now. From one of many failed franchisees of Driven Brands / Maaco / Meineke their business consists of up front fees and then hard core collections from people who will pay and pay trying to make bad concepts work. It is shameful.
having been in this business as a tool distributor with snap on tools for nearly nine years and with matco tools for 13 years as a district manager and regional manager and franchise development manager I can tell you that the companies make money on turn over……. why we would put into business 330 distributors to end the year with a 30 net gain……… 300 failed????????? failure was built in to the distributorship…… and management was aware of it… i brought to the senior management the reasons these people would most likely fail.. only to be told we cant follow your plan as it slows our growth………….. when they went to out side financing that insured the failure wouldnt hurt the companys bottom line as the financing was SBA in most cases…………. only a few very specially suited people ever made it in this business……….
THESE MAACO STORES EAT UP MONEY IF YOU WANT TO DO A GOOD JOB ON A VEHICLE THE MATERIALS PAINT AND DRY GOODS WILL COST YOU 10 TO 13 THOUSAND A MONTH ON TOP OF RENT, FEES THEY WANT, AND ADVERTISING NEARLY 52 THOUSAND NOT TO MENTION LABOR COSTS AND YOU WILL ASK YOURSELF WHAT HAVE I GOT MY FAMILY INTO…….. I HAVE LASTED OVER TEN YEARS BECAUSE I HAVE BORROWED OVER 150K TO HELP MYSELF STAY IN BUSINESS CANT BREAK THE AGREEMENT THEY COULD SUE YOU FOR BREACH OF CONTRACT………… PRETTY SOON I GET PAROLED FROM THE MAACO PRISION
Maaco buries its failure stats by not counting failed re-sales as failures. Also they reuse center numbers so you can not see how many folks they have actually churned through. Further on any given week only about 300 of its franchisees report earnings so approximately 150 franchisees do not report earnings for some it is just a missed week. For most it means they do not have enough to pay royalty fees. The way disclosure is setup for Maaco’s offering circular they are then able to exclude the bottom 100 or so franchisees. You do your due-diligence only to find after the fact that the information is skewed to the top 75% of Maaco’s franchises.
Maaco is has no business model . The business model is to do volume business . This gives Maaco to make money on paint & materials. They collect adv. fee and don’t spend it properly. They are one of the worst managed company. There are no profits in the business.It is no use to own this franchise or go even look at this company as your business option. Stay Away from it.
A few years ago Maaco tried a program called manage to own. The program would put a manager in a shop with the idea that the could work toward ownership. The program failed. The managers-would be owners saw how poorly Maaco shops performed. Since they had no real skin in the game they all walked away. Maaco does not keep owners in shops because the concept is good and makes people money, Maaco keeps owners in shops by suing people. The scenario time after time, 98% of Maaco failures are beaten down financially and mentally and just walk away. If you try and salvage your investment Maaco does everything they can to put you out of business ie. lawsuit, come after your home, your business, your equipment.
http://dockets.justia.com/search?query=maaco&search=Search&stateorcourt=&judge=&lawsuittype=&documentfilter=allcases&after=&before=
Go to the listing above find and call the people Maaco is suing. You will find honest, hard working people, who believed in the Maaco scam. When they tried to salvage their lives, with no help from Maaco the lawsuits come. Four lawsuits in two weeks. Buy Maaco, ruin yourself, then get sued.
Driven brands sold the company to a new company now. The New CEO is from Burger king.The company had major layoffs and moving from KOP to NC. The problem is every investment company which bought the chain made changes at the corporate level to show profits at corporate level and prepared for another sale. Never restructured the Business. No one is interested at the corporate level in listening to the New owners.
No Marketing, NO Branding approach, NO Profits unless u do more than 800K. There is no value for the hard work. If you are a owner run shop then u have some payroll money u can make.
PLEASE DON’T EVEN PLAN BUYING AN MAACO/MEINEKE THE MODEL IS COMPLETELY BROKE AND MAACO/MEINEKE LOOKS AT SUCCESSFUL OWNERS FROM PAST 10 YEARS. THEY DON’T KNOW HOW TO FIX THE PROBLEM.
THE NEW CEO WILL NOT BE ABLE TO FIX. HE IS SURROUNDED BY YES PEOPLE…..
Maaco Location which is for resale sometimes sold for less than 100k because the owner is broke and would have filed for Bank……. . So Maaco makes money out of resale and the equipment is worth pennies.The worst Part is Maaco Corporate employees. They Lie about every thing to get the sale done. They won’t tell the real break even.They have no clue how to fix the problems. The CEO of driven brands has no idea of how bad the name is. He did put some policies which are making shops go broke. There are lot of problems …
The Adv don’t work. The company has put an cap on AR that will put lot of stores out of business. No margins, if one store increase prices another store does for less all the customers prefer the location. The location thinkss it is making money seeing the business but they are doing work for less price and loose money .The corporate doesn’t spend money which they collect for Adv., This is a company if you are prepared to put all your savings and want to file for bank…. then go ahead and buy it ..
Bill Is right on money. They are one of the worst companies. The company handles fleet and PHH leasing companies work. They get 17% cut on top of 9% franchisee fee. you lose money if you do the work. The company new CEO is trying but he is not well versed with ground facts.They don’t have solution to fix the problem. They are only few new owners make it through first three years.
DON’T BUY MAACO THEY ARE SINKING SHIP IF YOU WANT TO LOSE MONEY GO TO CASINO AND PLAY. YOU MIGHT WIN.THE CHANCES OF YOU BEING SUCCESSFUL ARE SLIM.
After years of cheap prices, no quality standards, no shop building standards I left Maaco. Maaco Corporate has had three owners in as many years and no one knows what’s going on. The new Maaco Corporate business plan go after all the people who have been losing money to this company for years. No improved processes, no new techniques, no price negotiations to benefit the Individual shop owners. Bleed them all dry. You can not get blood from a turnip. Do not even consider this business. Maaco is a money loser.
I just filled out the request form to purchase a facility in ma for$199000.then i began seeing these horror stories. Thank you all as i was about to invest evrrything in this franchise to fill in the rest of my days as a business operator. I withdraw my offer completely. Guess id have better luck in reno. Thanks
He this massage for John Wesson, you minsion that you try to purchase facility in ma, i think this the same one i am trying to buy, so you didn’t want to buy this one then now, i like to talk to you, did you talk with owner more on this business, can you please let me know more on this, my email is [request from UnhappyFranchisee[at]gmail.com]
Why would you buy this place. An established business being sold for less than what a new Maaco without a customer base would cost. The current seller selling because he is not profitable. All you need to do is work harder than him to make it work. Read between the lines. Current owner has figured out after the fact that he was sold a scam. He can not make it work because it Maaco does not work. Rather than complete failure and financial ruin he is will to take a 100k loss or so if he can dump his problems in your lap and still recover some of his investment. Is there anyone selling any good, profitable, established franchises at deeply discounted prices. Maaco operates on this “there’s a sucker born every minute”. Hey look over there someone is giving away a Jack in the Box franchise. All you need to do is work so much harder than the last guy or the other 70% of their franchisees who fail. Get real stay very far away from this Maaco loser.
The judges in these numerous Maaco lawsuits against franchise owners should carefully consider the message they are sending to the American people when they allow Maaco to mislead and bully hard working citizens. Enough already!
Maaco has tried some new marketing but its going to fail. Just like jc penny Maaco hasn’t and won’t focus on the customer. Now a days customers are harder to please and when a relationship is built, customers hold the key to revenue. Look at the new commercial what a waste of thousands of dollars. The new CMO is an idiot. You have people that have no automotive experience running the marketing and corporate. RIP Maaco. They’ve done a lot a people wrong so it’s all going to come and bite them in the ass.
My last correspondence with MAACO – “Kevin,
Good morning and hope you are doing well. A bit of background – I opened a MAACO in Clearwater in 2007. Not the right time and eventually lost $1.2 MM, filed personal and business chapter 7 and have my home in foreclosure. I was able to supply the new owner with a complete MAACO spec shop, the landlord with $600,000 in capital improvements and had the pleasure of painting over 3,000 cars. We were a certified shop, had corporate accounts but two things happened. Timing of the economy and the Garmat Paint Booth. After the first 5 months of being opened and having to redo over 90% of the cars due to “dirt” in the booth, MAACO and Garmat designed a baffle for the paint booth that eliminated the dirt. That was always a situation where it was my fault, dirty booth, bad habits, and all the others standard owner generated mistakes. But after spending well over $100,000 of my money to repaint and have both MAACO and Garmat on site, it was not me but the booth. Sorry, we will fix it. Five weeks went by and I went to spraying everything in base/clear so that I could cut and buff out all the dirt. That was a real money maker at $299 per car. And the clients were upset because it took 4 days to do this.
I would prefer to go ahead and put a gun in my mouth and eat a bullet than start this all over again. I have never shared all of this with MAACO but I will now.
Best Regards,
Tony Ortiz
15 years and now the nightmare is over………… all the stories you have read here are TRUE believe me….. its VERY hard to earn a profit in this thing called a business……. all the “regular body shops” around me are making money! i see where they live………. i see what they drive………… i see their toys…… this is a losing business…the marketing is this paint cars CHEAP so if you need “WRITE OFFS” get into this business……. The new people at MAACO corp. e-mail threats about under reporting…. and what they will do to you…. even threats to put the IRS on you….. they should read the book HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE…… all these corporate arm chair generals would fail if they tried to run a MAACO shop for sure…. For the familes they have destroyed they should be reminded of what has been taking place around the country of lately! My Maaco friends keep me up todate on these people and what goes on…….
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