ANPR Hotline

May 22, 1997

10:10 pm

My name is Lance Winslow, Car Wash Guys, International.

My comment is very simple. First of all, I think all the information you take in over this pre-recorded voice message is of no value. The reason is because strong lobbying efforts on the part of the franchisee groups is skewing your data and so you are having a lot of people call in who really don't know what they are talking about, who have been told what to say, who are of franchisee groups and are not really on the team of fairness, but more jaded towards getting everything they want and giving nothing to the franchisor.

I am a franchisor and I am very concerned with the way this is going. I think it is wrong and I think you guys need to get to the real bottom of it, and the only way to do that is to get rid of this entire document and redo the entire document and make the whole document fair. You need to look more into the viability of the business and not necessarily full disclosure. Is the business viable -- that is what people need to know. They also need to know if its going to work and the only way to do that is to stop letting people hid behind the disclosures and let the people who are buying the franchise ask all the questions and have the person selling the franchise have to answer all of the questions. And this disclosure document does nothing except help franchisors screw franchisees and franchisees don't even know how to get unscrewed and they are the ones leaving all of these messages.

So, this whole thing is of no value. It is total government bureaucracy at its worst and it makes me laugh. I can't believe you guys are doing this. It's really a waste of time. I want to just let everybody know how I feel, and that's exactly how I feel.

So, 888-927-4489. That's my phone number. I'll talk to you at length. I'll tell you what's wrong with your system.

I wrote a document myself. I didn't hire an attorney and it was very incredible the kind of things that I was advised to put in the document, which I didn't. And from the franchisee perspective, the franchisee group also advised me what to put into a document, and I didn't. I put into the document what I needed to put in there to make successful franchisees, cause that is my purpose. Not to go public in 2 years and make a lot of money and buy a big house on the hill. But to have a system that works.

And I think we need to get back to basics and not, and stay away from greed of the franchisors who just want to make a fast buck, and give franchisees a fair shake. But I don't think full disclosure or adding stuff to this is going to help anybody except franchisors to make even more money and screw even more franchisees. And franchisee don't even know how they are getting screwed and half of them are so stupid. The people that call me to buy a franchise are so dumb, they don't even know what to ask or how to do it. And I could screw every one of them if I want to. But I don't, and I don't. And it looks like other franchisors do and they are getting really good at it. So I think you need to get rid of the whole document and start all over again and let's get serious. Let's change the law and make attorneys learn the real rule and . . . .