FURRY LAND Pet Grooming Franchise Complaints
The Furry Land mobile pet grooming franchise opportunity promoted & sold by the controversial Phoenix Franchise Brands, headed by Greg Longe and Maria Shanabarger Longe. Like the other franchises promoted by the Longes and their cabal of commission-hungry brokers (Rhino7, Franchoice, IFPG, etc.), Furry Land mobile pet grooming is producing a firestorm of franchisee complaints & horror stories. by Sean Kelly (Email the author in confidence: UnhappyFranchisee[at]Gmail[dot]Com)
(UnhappyFranchisee.com) Also Read:
Franchisees from nearly all of Phoenix Franchise Brands’ stable of unstable brands (Fetch! Pet Care, Furry Land Mobile Pet Grooming, Spray Foam Genie, Door Renew, MedSpa810, Steel Coated Floors) have filed anonymous complaints with me and with the FTC in response to their call for public comments.
Many Furry Land mobile pet grooming franchise owners were sold an opportunity represented as an “investor model” passive investment.
They were told they could pay an additional fee for the Managed Services option and the company franchisor would subsantially run their franchise for them. As you’ll see in the comments below, many claim that things were not what they seemed… and now they’re losing hundreds of thousands of dollars more than the represented investment amount.
Many contend that this is business as usual for Phoenix Franchise Brands, Rhino7 and Greg Longe.
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Are you familiar with Spray Foam Genie or other Phoenix Franchise Brands? Have you worked with Greg Longe or Maria Shanabarger Longe in the past? Please share a confidential comment below or email the author, in confidence, at UnhappyFranchisee[at]Gmail.Com.
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Furry Land Franchise – Frequent Complaints
- FDD significantly understates costs
- False advertising and misrepresentation of financial model
- Misleading/misrepresentation of intent of the Managed Services model “investor
only” and breach of contract - Inadequate staffing for the Managed Services Model
- Lack of transparency and accountability
- Junk Fees
- Information withheld during discovery phase and in FDD
- Inaccurate invoicing of royalties, fees
- Flawed Unprofitable Model
- The financial model that they provided was inaccurate and misleading
Phoenix Franchise Brands “Target Upper Middle Class Middle-Aged People… Despite a Failing Business Model”
Notable Quotes From complaints::
“They target upper middle class middle-aged people who have money to pour into keep their franchise alive despite a failing model steeped in heavy franchise fees. “
“Furry Land Mobile pet grooming owners are mostly all bleeding money and many have closed their doors as the investment kept growing 3-5x’s what was in the original FDD.”
“We have invested over THREE times what the FDD says is the “high end” of the investment”
“If we are to be a standalone business, we need to be allowed to operate as one…”
“they are deceiving many people by selling them managed service program that does nothing, but take money out of your account every week.”
“When asked for help and solutions to the lagging sales, they… recommended continually to just spend more money on marketing…”
“[Their] response was that we should spend more to get more customers…”
“The Phoenix Brand team, including the operations manager, do not have the experience, expertise, and knowledge to operate a business overall and in particular a Door Renew and Furry Land franchise business…”
“Furry Land Franchise is NOT Hands-Off” Furry Land Franchisee
On October 8, 2024, a Furry Land franchisee submitted this complaint to the Federal Trade Commission:
My husband and I have been the victim of what we consider a fraudulent or misrepresented franchise model owned by Phoenix Franchise Brands and Greg and Maria Longe out of Michigan.
We own Furry Land, one of their four brands, a mobile pet grooming business.
We own two other businesses where we live and got into this one because they advertised a “investor only hands-off model” that is using Managed services to run your location for an extra 5% of franchise fees.
[“Hands-off” claim is false, misrepresentation]
Not only is the model NOT hands-off, we have many grievances leading us to believe there’s some serious investigation needed of how these people are taking money left and right from owners by the hundreds of thousands while watching us drown in a sea of red and losing hundreds of thousands.
[FDD significantly misrepresents necessary investment”]
We have invested over THREE times what the FDD says is the “high end” of the investment (which we were told is illegal).
[Managed Care model not adequately staffed]
We also do not see the managed services model as staffed enough to really run our businesses. We are in the thick of it day in and day out and have to be in order to keep the business from sinking.
I am attaching a list of grievances here for you to review. There are so many that most of think a Pyramid or Ponzi scheme is at hand. It’s our opinion that Greg and Maria Long want to see franchises fail so they can “resell” your territory and do it to another unsuspecting soul.
[High fees, No Accountability or Transparency]
They target upper middle class middle-aged people who have money to pour into keep their franchise alive despite a failing model steeped in heavy franchise fees.They not only charge royalties of 6%, they charge a brand fund 1% (with no accountability or transparency), marketing minimum spend (with no transparency), $2000 call center fee they won’t let anybody out of even though they are drowning in losses, and the 5% managed services fee.
The model they sell as passive and hands-off has severely put a dent and change in our intended lifestyle.While running two other businesses full-time, we now have to carve out time to run this one which we would NOT have ever signed up for.
We believe Phoenix Franchise brands needs to be investigated thoroughly and ask for laws to be put into place to correct some of the behavior they are getting away with.
“I was totally deceived by Greg Longe” Furry Land Franchise Owner
On October 9, 2024, the FTC posted this Furry Land complaint. :
Hi, my name is [redacted].
I purchased a Furry Land Franchise from Phoenix Franchise Group run by Greg and Maria Long.
I managed to keep the company open for 18 months while losing an extreme amount of money that I had to take out loans to do.
[Falsely represented as an “Investor Model”]
The only reason I purchased this franchise was because I was told by Greg Longe that I was buying into an investor model and paying a management fee for them to run the company.
He had stated that they knew how to get these businesses profitable very quickly.
Which in the 18 months that I was open, I pretty much had to do everything without hardly any help from them.
[Never Had a Profitable Month. No Managed Services Franchisees are profitable]
They had stated in the FDD to have $40,000 [in working capital] once the company was open till it was profitable.
I put in an additional $185,000 and never had one profitable month.
I was totally deceived by Greg Longe into purchasing the Furry Land franchise.
I lost my entire savings and had to take out loans.
I have talked to many other franchisees that are under the managed services and not one of them has made a profit the fee structure set up by Greg and Maria.
Longe has made it impossible to earn a profit and they are deceiving many people by selling them managed service program that does nothing, but take money out of your account every week.
I am asking That Phoenix Franchise Group & Greg and Maria Long be investigated on the practices and deceptions that they are robbing families of their savings.
[Franchisee losses: $225,000+]
Phoenix Franchise Brand’s “Misrepresentations, Mistakes, Errors, and Disclosure Failures.”
On October 10, 2024, The FTC posted this complaint from a Furry Land franchisee in Florida:
I purchased the Miami territories for both of the Door Renew and Furry Land franchises from Phoenix Brand on August 19, 2022 for $285,000 each.
I purchased these franchises with Brand’s commitment that these businesses would operate as full absentee (without my need to act as the General Manager). I signed a Managed Service Agreement with the Brand to this end. This was the only reason I decided to buy into these franchises.
However, the Brand was in breach of this agreement almost from the beginning.
[No Sales Training]
The initial franchise training that took up most of the week focused entirely on providing the service instead of how to sell the product.
In the case of Furryland, the general manager was trained on how to groom pets. For Door Renew, they were trained on how to refinish doors.
There was no training for sales.
[Corporate is understaffed, lacks experience]
These franchise businesses cannot be run full absentee without the support of knowledgeable and regularly involved management from Phoenix Brand. Unfortunately, and unbeknownst to me at the time of being sold the franchises and signing the franchise agreements, the Phoenix Brand team, including the operations manager, do not have the experience, expertise, and knowledge to operate a business overall and in particular a Door Renew and Furry Land franchise business, and they are also overly committed where they cannot provide the necessary recurring oversight to support the full absentee model.
A one-hour meeting per week is not sufficient to direct and guide the General Manager or provide any meaningful management assistance.
This full absentee model was sold to me based on theory and not a proven business model, unbeknownst to me at the time.
[No Successful Managed Service Franchisees]
I have learned that there are no examples of successful full absentee Door Renew and Furry Land franchises.
At no point was there a consistent engagement between the brand’s sales team and my general manager.
When confronted about lacking sales, direction, and participation by the Brand, I got feedback from the CEO, the VP of operations Door Renew, VP of operations Furryland, and the President that they were going to fix it. When asked for help and solutions to the lagging sales, they blamed the general manager and recommended continually to just spend more money on marketing.
These recommendations directly contradicted the recommendations they made at the launch of these businesses.
[False Earnings Claims in FDD]
Phoenix Brand misrepresented item 19 in the FDD for both businesses.For Door Renew, the financial projections were only at the unit level and did not accurately reflect the true operating costs and thus profitability. In fact, they omitted many standard costs such as insurance and rent. They provided a financial forecast that was unrealistic and did not accurately reflect the true cost nor was it based on previous performance.
When confronted about this, they misrepresented the performance of other territories of claims of their profitability.
I later uncovered that this was misrepresented as their most successful territory was also losing money just not as great a rate as mine.
At every turn when I asked for them to remedy the lack of performance per the Managed Service Agreement or sales, they would make empty promises and would never respond in writing. In addition, when I complained that the operations managers were ineffective they would continually move them to other positions and brought in a new manager thus disrupting any continuity.
[Door Renew lacks a proven or viable business model.]
Since being sold the franchises and signing the franchise agreements, I have learned that the Door Renew franchise has many problems and issues including it lacks a proven or viable business model.
From the second month of operation, I asked for the playbook for success for Door Renew and it apparently doesn’t exist as it has not been provided. The franchise brand is learning as it goes at my expense.
When asked what other successful territories are doing such that we can replicate it, I receive nothing only meaningless, untested, and unproven suggestions to try, requiring even higher expenditures that do not result in any growth or improvement.
Among other things, the operations manager doesn’t know what works or what even has potential of working.
The brand is learning as it goes, or just guessing at my expense.
[Key operating expenses omitted from the FDD and financials.]
Other Door Renew territory owners report the same. The business model was not profitable with key operating expenses omitted from the FDD and financials.
If I had been shown realistic financial projections prior to being sold the franchises and when signing the franchise agreements, I would never have moved forward with the purchase of these franchises.
Significantly understated investment of money and time required
The “real” capital requirements would have deterred me from purchasing these franchises. The then-expected capital requirements and the ability to operate these businesses full absentee were the primary reasons I agreed to purchase these franchises.
These were misrepresentations, mistakes, errors, and disclosure failures by Phoenix Brands.
Phoenix Franchise Brands is Misleading & Deceptive – Franchisee
On October 10, 2024, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) shared this complaint from a Furry Land franchise owner. I have added the section titles for clarity and readability:
Subject Organization: Phoenix Franchise Brands, specifically the Furry Land brand.
[False Expectations, Deceptive Practices]
The purpose for my comments is to highlight concerns regarding the Phoenix Franchise Brands business practices and their misleading methods of managing franchisees. I understand that running a business requires the owner to accept the risk of loss. However, the Phoenix Franchise Brands team has used deceptive practices to entice business owners to invest in Furry Land franchises with the illusion that the business would perform different than reality.
They have set inaccurate expectations and have failed to provide the transparency and support that I believe they are required to provide in exchange for the royalties and other fees that they are taking from franchisees.
[Inaccurate, Misleading Financial Model Represented]
My first concern is the inaccuracy of the financial model disclosed in the FDD and in subsequent documents. When we reviewed the FDD, we were told that the results reflected the operation of the business as an owner-operator model, which did not include the royalties and fees required by the franchise agreement. We understood that. After signing the franchise agreement, we were given access to a Google Drive folder that contained several documents designed to assist us as we began operations. The financial model that they provided was inaccurate and misleading. The link to that model has subsequently been disabled.[Services for Managed Services agreement Never Delivered]
Next, we were sold on the idea that the franchisor would operate the business on our behalf through a managed services agreement. After two months of operations, we determined that they were not upholding their part of the agreement. I have attached the memo of understanding that we sent to the franchisor to address our concerns. In response, we joined multiple conference calls to address our concerns and ultimately were released from the managed services agreement that we had entered into. This was not an admission of wrong doing but also did not address the concern that the franchisor was not abiding by the terms of the agreement that they had signed with us and presumably with other locations.[High Digital Marketing Fees with No reporting, No Results]
[Response to Complaints is Alway “Spend More Money]
Our next concern was and is related to digital marketing.We are required to use the digital marketing firm chosen by the franchisor and do not own or have control of our own website.
I was sympathetic to this for a period of time due to the fact that we are part of a franchise network. However, we have been promised multiple times that we would receive reporting regarding the effectiveness of our marketing and have not been provided with that reporting on a regular basis.
And, after hiring a second support firm and new employees within the franchisor, we were told that the reports we had received were inaccurate. The website has been overhauled and again we have been promised reporting and we have yet to receive the reporting required to make decisions about how much we should spend and how we should spend our marketing budget.
I raised my concerns with the franchisor in March of 2022, after six months of operations, as included in the attached email.
We addressed the concerns again in an email on August 30, 2023 (attached) and in an email exchange beginning on September 6, 2023 (attached).
The initial response was that we should spend more to get more customers.
After presenting some analysis to them, they said they would get us information and never did. We were told that they would ensure that our Google Business profile was set up and it took more than a year to get it set up correctly, potentially preventing us from attracting new customers.
We continue to lack the visibility into the use of the funds we are paying for digital marketing managed by the franchisor.
[No reporting, no clear benefit from 1% “Brand Image Fee” ]
We are also paying a 1% brand image fee does not include with it visibility and transparency regarding how the funds are being used.
[Required Call Center is Cost Prohibitive, Ineffective]
My final concern is related to the requirement to use a central call center.
We are charged a flat fee of $2,000 each month to receive support for up to 5 vans. Once we add a sixth van, the fee doubles until we reach another 5 vans (10 in total). As highlighted in the attached email from August 30, 2023, we have been given documentation regarding the procedures of the call center from time to time that do not reflect the actual support that we are receiving.
We are required to maintain an employee on our staff to manage our schedule because it is not possible for the remote call center to effectively or efficiently manage our schedule remotely and when they do assist, they do not complete the job in accordance with the procedures we were told that they would follow.
The cost is prohibitive and their unwillingness to allow franchisees to manage the schedules 100% on their own makes it feel like we are working for them and not for ourselves.
If we are to be a standalone business, we need to be allowed to operate as one and released from the processes that prevent us from being stand alone businesses.
Furry Land Guilty of Franchise Fraud, False Advertising & Misrepresentation, Franchisee Alleges
October 10, 2024 an Anonymous Furry Land franchise owner submitted this bullet-pointed list of grievances to the FTC:
Grievances
False advertising and misrepresentation of financial model – fraud in the
inducement and original solicitation
- Time and number of vans to break even
- Operating cash till break even
- Rhino 7 – misrepresents “absentee investor only” model
- Total investment high end listed in FDD is $225k. Many of us are at $730k and
counting (which is illegal)- Minimized the complexity of operating this industry
- Minimized the ability to find qualified groomers
- Forced owners to buy into expenses they didn’t need – such as warehouse,
office space resulting in higher operating costs- Solicited investor only – in a different state – no help – untrue – no managed
services- Advertised recruiting – they do zero recruiting in reality
Misleading/misrepresentation of intent of the Managed Services model “investor
only” and clear breach of contract
- Numerous items in the agreement were not done and are not getting done
currently. See list separately- One hour a week is not managing our location. We have to be very hands on
day-to-day as owners- Not staffed to meet expectation of “running our business” at the local level
- Using owners as guinea pigs
- Misled owners to invest large sums of cash on marketing with no tracking,
reporting
No transparency and accountability
- Call center fees – no accountability with where, how the funds are being spent. If
not used, owners should get a refund- Brand fees – no accountability with how that’s spent
- Marketing reports not provided the entire first 13 months or more even upon
request.- Accountability of marketing dollars not clearly delineated
- No call center reports when asked
Junk Fees
- Moego fees not in FDD
- Quickbook fees (??)
- Paychex fees – steep
Owners Information withheld during discovery phase and in FDD
- Only Nick Field, founder of Furry Land Vegas, was listed in FDD. Since then
we’ve uncovered many more owners existed but names and #’s not provided- Franchisor “hosted” discovery call with one owner, Phil Nelson, of Colorado Springs. According to law, we should have been able to call any and all owners and have a confidential discussion to vet the opportunity. Had we done this, many of us would not be here today.
Inaccurate invoicing of royalties, fees
- Many owners finding overcharges on fees (using moego numbers that include
taxes and tips to derived percentages)- Won’t refund overcharges – just ignore owners
- No accountability for clearing out owners’ bank accounts
Inexperienced Model
- Processes not formed or documented
- Inexperienced management and bad advice, bad direction
- No recruiting method (just use public apps)
- No checklists for operational expectations
- No financial, forecasting break-even models
- No business plans, marketing plans
Furry Land Franchise Owner: Phoenix Franchise Brands Promises the World
On 10/30/24 anonymous wrote:
Spot on! Phoenix Franchise brands promises the world and then takes huge amounts of money and doesn’t provide the services as promised.
[Furry Land owners losing 3x-5x the amount represented in the FDD]
Furry Land Mobile pet grooming owners are mostly all bleeding money and many have closed their doors as the investment kept growing 3-5x’s what was in the original FDD.
[Managed Services model does not provide promised support]
Managed Services is a joke. They do not “run” your business as the word “run” implies.
They hop on an hour call with your GM weekly to give advice.
There’s so many things done wrong, it’s hard to name them all.
and mid-level managers.
About Anonymous Franchisee Comments: Anonymous speech is a protected & important right. It’s an unfortunate reality that many franchisees must share their experiences and opinions anonymously for fear of retaliation. Do not let franchisors or franchise sellers dismiss or discredit warnings communicated anonymously… after all, fear and intimidation by franchisors often necessitates anonymity.
That said, do your own research and learn the lessons shared throughout this site!About Spray Foam Genie & Phoenix Franchise Brands:
Livonia, MI-based Phoenix Franchise Brands was founded & is headed by Greg Longe & Maria Longe (aka Maria Shinabarger).
One or both of the Longes were previously associated with British Swim School, Martinizing International, Rooster’s Men’s Grooming Center, Zoup! (rebranded Z!Eats), & Collision on Wheels International (defunct).
Contact us for the current 2024 Furry Land Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD) for free!*
(Sold by Frandata for $270.00)
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Tags: Furry Land, Furryland, Furry Land franchise complaints, Furry Land franchise, FurryLand franchise, Phoenix Franchise Brands, franchise complaints, Greg Longe, Maria Longe, Kevin Longe, Rhino7, Sean Kelly
