Jani-King International review: Franchise is a Scam 62

Coverall LOST ! Franchisor HIT HARD !

Cleaners win !

AWUAH WINS !

BOSTON – Today the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court smacked Coverall janitorial franchise system with a huge bill for labeling its employees as franchisees.

The high court ruled that the franchisor must pay back franchise related fees, including franchise fees, promissory note payments, additional business fees, and payments for insurance.

Experts think the ruling that franchisees can be disguised employees will ripple down to other franchise systems and other states.

Coverall argued that the franchisee should only be allowed to collect fees directly related to the misclassification. Because the additional fees Pius Awuah sought were the result of his contract agreement with the franchisor, Coverall asserted that they should not apply to the damages he sought.

Coverall SJC Decision
U.S. District Court Judge William G. Young ruled (pdf) that the misclassified employees could collect wages, insurance premiums and other employment benefits, but the attorneys for the franchisees weren't satisfied. Shannon Liss-Riordan of Lichten & Liss-Riordon stated that her clients should also be paid all fees. She said, "By requiring companies to fully reimburse employees for all the fees they incurred as a result of misclassification, the court will send a message to employers that wage law violations will not be tolerated."

The judge then certified the Awuah v Coverall case to Massachusetts highest court after determining that state wage laws require employers to cover certain statutory costs of doing business, and that shifting such expenses to a misclassified worker constitutes damages incurred. Because the Supreme Judicial Court had no controlling precedence, Judge Young submitted pertinent questions to give the court the opportunity to set a precedent in defining the damages that should be available to the employees misclassified as independent contractors.

On one pertinent question addressing whether Coverall could deduct franchise fees from the employees' wages, the state's Supreme Court concluded, "No. . . the Wage Act forbids the deduction."

Prior to the decision the case had brought criticism from the franchisor community. Coverall attorney Michael D. Vhay of Boston's DLA Piper stated that broadening the damages beyond wages and benefits would produce a flood of litigation and drive franchisors from the state because they would be unable to collect fees from franchisees.

Steve Calderia, CEO of the International Franchise Association said, "On behalf of the franchise industry, we urge the court to fully take into account the unique attributes of franchising and the federal regulatory oversight of the franchise business model."

Following the court's decision, Liss-Riordan said, "Today's ruling from the SJC is a long-awaited victory for potentially thousands of cleaning workers throughout Massachusetts. The court determined that Massachusetts wage laws and public policy prohibit employers from selling jobs to employees." Liss-Riordan added that the commercial cleaning industry has been plagued by companies such as Coverall that claim to be franchisors but are really employers who make their money by profiting off of their own workers. She said, "This ruling will allow commercial cleaning to be performed in Massachusetts by legitimate employers who do not charge their workers for their jobs. The ruling will have huge ramifications on the commercial cleaning industry, as well as potentially other industries, and the ruling will likely have ripple effects in other states."

I agree with these people-it's a scam.

Do not become a CLIENT or "buy" into a business agreement with ANY Franchise based cleaning company! All will rip you off, they are all the same JanPro, JaniKing, Coverall, Vanguard or any other similar company. I worked for one at the corportate level and had to leave after seeing the lack of ethics displayed throughout the company. DO NOT INVEST YOUR MONEY WITH ANY OF THEM!

I owned my own janitorial service for years; and have been viewing the JaniKing system for nearly a week, now.
I can argue both sides of this thing, from my standpoint:
1) The past:
In year one, I made $9, 000 after expenses. I had to work a day job AND clean at night. Many trips to the grocery store included decisions between milk & cereal because we could not afford both.
In year two, I made $16, 500. I still had to work a part-time day job; but we were making it work!
In year three, I landed some substantial one-time contracts (construction clean-up) that gave me room to do mass-mailings, and afforded me the opportunity to quit my day job in order follow up on the mailings with phoning & direct cold calls. These worked, and I was on my way; so, that year, I made nearly $50, 000. It took me being listed in the phone book with a professionally designed ad($2600/yr), doing mass-mailers 2x a year ($6400/yr), handling customer complaints in the morning, doing prospecting in the afternoons, doing supplies in the early evening, cleaning & floor work at night... All 7 days of the week.
In year four, I chopped my profits back to $30, 000 by taking on a manager & a little more growth - but I still averaged 130 hours a week of work.
In year five, despite being at nearly $100, 00 for the year, I gave up my business because it was sucking the life out of my marriage & keeping me away from my kids (and, most days, I'm comfortable with choosing the marriage over the $$$... LOL)

JaniKing:
It is true: I do NOT see JaniKing allowing somebody to rocket to $100, 000/yr in a 5-year period. HOWEVER: Their bids are actually a little above the market. Their system also keeps those who are willing to work, just the same as I did on my own, the chance to NOT work 2 & 3 jobs just to survive those first couple of years- as so many upstarts must - and it does allow for a pattern of growth. As for the lawsuits, it is an unfortunate truth in life that anything that is systematic & has an exchange of monitary value will, eventually, have somebody exploit it; but they seem to have a proper documentation system in place for how you are to do things & what their policies will be.

To Mr. Business,

I have heard the opposite that janiking is actually bidding very low. To the point people are making less than minimum wage. But what is worse they steal peoples accounts.This is Fraud or like a recent Judge said " A Modified Ponzi Scheme" If you go to Bluemaumau.org and read a recent article on cleaning franchisors you can read what Attorney Richard Solomon posted.

Richard Solomon
" an excellent example of a bozo franchise that I have vetted for over a dozen investors. Not one of my clients bought one of these fanchises.

The story of janitorial franchising is that they are sold with a promise of a guaranteed initial inventory of building maintenance contracts so that you start out "making money". Most of the time these deals either don't produce even enough start up revenue to enable you to do the work and also go out and scout up your own additional building maintenance accounts, or if they are good accounts they are soon taken from you and given to another new franchisee.

It is easy to take a building account from a janitorial franchisee. The rep goes to see the account and tells them that they have conducted a follow up inspection of the work you have been doing and have found it to be less than proper. They will happpily replace you with a better operator to assure their total satisfaction with the service. The building manager signs off on your being fired and you are toast in that account and in any other account of that building management organization. These franchiors typically lack sufficient actual on hand accounts to provide a start up customer base for new franchisees signed on. So they just go take buildings away from recently signed franchisees and give them to the newbies.

Even in the best of situations the ability to go get a building janitorial account on your own is nothing like you are told in training or on "discovery day".

You always end up doing toilets yourself because you lack funds to hire help. Often your wife and kids are doing toilets with you to try to get it going.

This is a perfect segment of franchising where competent pre investment vetting by someone who knows the industry can save you from financial ruin.

Another Judge once again rules against the cleaning franchisors this time against Jani-King. They to like coverall will have to pay back there cleaners there franchise fees. The cleaners are ruled to be employees. I'm only posting a small portion of the article to read the whole article you can go to the following link.

http://www.bluemaumau.org/11679/deja_vu_janiking_workers_are_not_franchisees

Posted Wed, 2012/06/20 - 13:23 by Janet Sparks

Deja Vu: Jani-King Workers Are Not Franchisees

BOSTON – A district judge once again has issued an order stating that Jani-King International and other entities misclassified its janitorial workers in Massachusetts by labeling them as franchisees.

In doing so, the world’s largest janitorial cleaning service franchisor will have to pay damages to the employees, which will include the franchise fees and additional business fees, as well as all insurance payments made by the workers. The judge also denied the company’s efforts to decertify the class action lawsuit, at this time representing approximately 300 janitorial workers

To try and answer some of the comments you have made, but lets for just a moment forget that you are involved with either Jani-King, Jan-Pro, McDonalds or any other franchise business, lets look at the situation openly and honestly.
1. No name calling please it just clouds the issues and stops us being able to look at the issues.
2. I beg to offer the opinion that no matter whether law suits go through or not isn't the issue, but rather how many franchise owners jump on the back of the law suit and how many stay on board with the franchisee. As I understand it, with each of the law suits mentioned around 20% of the franchisees (past and present) are looking to jump on board. Isn't that the same as the 20-60-20 rule that everyone understands.
Now when you see that 20% fail is this s surprise? Well yes actually it is, simply because business failure is usually greater than this and in the words of the courts franchising is no more successful than that of a start up business. I can therefore only surmise from your data that they all these business's are a success, certainly not to some individuals but on the whole a success.
3.You ask if it is OK for a franchisor to not give you all the work you wanted or indeed was agreed when signed and started. let me ask you how many that found themselves suffering this were not putting the time in and not delivering what their customers needed, a little bit of a rhetorical question as I know you don't have the answer, but surely some and do you take this into your argument?
4.is it a ponzi scheme? We must of course look at the failures and from this you may say it is, but then you have to look at the success's and say they still have their contracts and these are not being recycled and sold on again so for them it is not.
You also state that a franchisee is not trained to sell, but what puts most people away from purchasing a franchise, the mear fact that they have to sell. Surely you can't have it both ways.
5. On this fact I completely agree with you, but if the franchisee accepts these accounts then he too must be insane. But, as I understand it there is a recourse to a solution if a franchisee can prove this. On this point I may be wrong, but do ask yourself if it is only the franchisees that fail that get these accounts or both failures and success's and how do the latter manage to make them work.
6.I have no knowledge so cannot comment
7.There is no business the size of any of these franchise's that can make this many decisions on an individual franchisee basis. I rather suspect that these decisions are made by individuals within the local region that are simply appling the franchise agreement and or operations manual to their understanding and if there is a mistake these can be challenged. The fact that neither of us know how many challenges were made leaves us wondering who is right and who is wrong.
8. Name calling gets us nothing and isn't something that you can forward as part of a legal argument.
9. I also bought a franchise that didn't work, but I did put myself in a position where I knew what I had done wrong and what they franchisor had done wrong and was able to win my argument.
The problem with arguments put forward here is that you get other people on board and they look atb the argument in the same angry one sided view and this will only ruin their chances of getting the right redress that they deserve.

To DutchGroup Why are fighting with some one who has been there explaining the way things went. It seams he is telling the truth and you guys want to cover it so the other people will not see it. Are you a share holder of Jani-King or the other company? There must some truth in to what 1st Amendment is saying otherwise you guys would not jump on him like you own Jani-King. I was trying to buy an account from Jani-king but checked before I become the next disappointed franchisee and I found there are a lot of unexplained dealings on their record. I thank 1st Amendment for putting his complain on the net because I am not going to buy an account from Jani-King now.
If you want to defend Jani-King's record you will fail because there are a lot of people who are crying fault with their dealings.
Even the uneducated can see their account biding or reselling methods. Do not take me there, or i will keep going on.

i work for jeni king, i clean about 5000 square feet, this is big property, i work 7 days, they only pays 4 hours to do the whole building, plus they only pays 950 dollars per month, sometimes the months is 5 weeks i lose money, this property is located in orlando fl, jani king be reasonable with the workers

JANIKING does not pay their workers! I worked over two months for a "franchise owner" and never received a check, when I got in touch with the main office they told me they would talk to the owner and that this was not the first time he had not paid his employees. They told me to come back in 3 weeks and pick up my check. I called back in 3 weeks like she said to get my check and now they are telling me that they are not responsible and I have to contact him... This is outrageous and how can it be legal, just because he is a franchise owner, he is still using the name Janiking. This whole ordeal is absolutely ridiculous, and I'm only one out five others I know of that have not been paid! SCAM!

I was working at Jani-King Austin as inside sales and they are a huge scam operation. Of course they are trying to crawl out of this now. If the franchise knows how much money the company takes compared to what they are getting I bet we will hear a different song and dance.
Example:
I have worked for Jani-King of Austin aka as Stocker management for a little over a year and it is the only company I have ever worked for that actually rips off their employees payroll. Besides our hourly rate we are told as a bonus we get 3% of all the sales listed on the board and once we reach $15, 000 in sales we get a $125 kicker and then additional $125 kicker for every $5, 000 dollars in sales thereafter. This month we put over $80, 000 in sales on the board and now they won’t pay us all of the money earned and have kept $1000 from each of us.
Prior to this month I didn’t keep up with my pay but just trusted them, but now I have to believe if they will do this to their inside sales representatives look out if you’re a franchisee and don’t keep up with your bookkeeping.

WOW! Thanks to all who've opened my eyes concerning investing in Jani-King. I will never, never consider this company. I was getting ready to retire and open a franchise with them, now I will stick to investing elsewhere..thanks to all for you true comments of Jani-King!