JANI-KING Franchise Complaints: Add your own – or defend the company – below.
(UnhappyFranchisee.Com) Entrepreneur magazine lavishes high praise on the Jani-King franchise opportunity via its 2010 franchise rankings. Entrepreneur ranked the 10,000+ unit Jani-King #8 overall in the 2010 Franchise 500, the #2 low-cost franchise, the #1 home-based franchise and #7 in the “America’s Best Global Franchise” category.
In a time when many individuals are struggling to make ends meet, the Jani-King franchise opportunity – with its low start-up cost and guaranteed cleaning contracts – seems especially enticing. But do a bit of digging and you’ll find some troubling – and remarkably consistent – complaints from Jani-King franchise owners.
Lawsuits allege a cleaning-contract shell game.
In an August, 2009 Franchise Times article on lawsuits leveled against commercial cleaning franchise companies, Julie Bennett writes:
…the lawsuits, filed recently in Massachusetts against all three companies and in Pennsylvania, Minnesota and California against Jani-King, contend that the cleaning companies misrepresent their offerings, because they do not have sufficient customers to guarantee each franchisee the amount of monthly cleaning business they purchase. Instead, the lawsuits allege, they breach their contracts by underbidding the amount of time and staffing required for each job, refusing to allow franchisees to inspect cleaning jobs or bid sheets before accepting or rejecting a job, offering geographically inconvenient jobs and unjustly taking jobs from one franchisee to re-sell them to others.
Consumer complaint sites are abundant with specific complaints about the Jani-King franchise, the franchisor and the regional master franchisees who recruit unit-level owners.
On the Complaints Board, 2009-08-22 letshelp wrote
franchise is a scam
I purchased a Jani-King Commercial Cleaning Franchise after reading they were a great franchise opportunity in several franchise magazines. During my initial meeting with the regional director I expressed concern over the 40% they take off the top of what clients are billed. He told me not to worry as they take all their fees into consideration when giving a cleaning quote to a client.
When they started offerring me contracts I would do the math and tell them there was very little profit in some contracts and absolutely none in others. I was told this was a low profit margin industry and I had to learn to work some “break even” contracts for I would get additional business from those same clients ( floor waxing ).
I accepted some of these contracts since they are only required to offer you the amount of cleaning business you purchased (with the franchise cost ). If you don’t accept the accounts they are not required to offer you anymore.
Once I started working accounts, the operations director would go by the account every month to evaluate the franchisee’s performance. He would always find something negative to write about to justify taking the account away from the franchisee and reselling it to a new franchisee. So the franchisee ends up losing the original franchise fee and whatever fee he paid for the accounts he was working at hardly no profit.
I later learned this type of scam preys on people who have never been in business for themselves – so trust the Franchisor. If anyone is looking into purchasing this type of franchise, do yourself a favor and run a Google or Yahoo search on Jani-King. They have had numerous lawsuits and government complaints. I lost all my savings, but hopefully others can learn from my mistake.
85 days ago, Rickety Rabbit responded:
Almost the same thing happend to me in Boston. I bought a Jani King franchise in 2006. I paid $15, 000 for $4000 per month in business. Minus the 22% Jani- King takes off the top. With what is left I pay for labor, chemicals, and equipment.
Jani King has it so they do not have to provide you with the $4000 per month in business, they only need OFFER it to you. If you refuse it, that’s it. They don’t owe it to you any longer. You had your chance. But here is what they do. They underbid the account by hundreds of dollars. They make false promises to the business owner, and do not tell the franchise owner about it. When the business owner cancels because the promises are not met, the franchise owner is left to make a decision. Take care of the promises never mentioned to you ( such as delivering the newspaper ever morning, or a free strip and wax every month) both are actual cases, and both would have put me in the negative for profit.
So I was forced to give it up. No fault of mine. Also the account is not supposed to cancel before one year. If they do Jani King promises to file suit with a killer legal team. Which they must have because they are still in business. However they only use it to defend itself from angry franchise owners.
They purposely offer you accounts that are way underbid, or too far away. When you deny them, they no longer owe you the account. If I could do it all over again I would invest in real estate on Venus before having to deal with this again.
One last thing. I placed over 40 calls per month to the district manager for four months straight. Not one call answered not one call returned. I had to buy an existing franchise that was already working with history in order to pay the bills while waiting for my $4000 in business. Now I am about to lose those accounts to under bidders. Can you believe that? In this economy there are those worse then Jani King that UNDERBID them. Sorry. Very sorry.
ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH THE JANI-KING FRANCHISE? WHAT DO YOU THINK? SHARE A COMMENT BELOW.
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I just read the following article.
To read the whole article you can go to the following link.
http://www.prlog.org/10396729-jani-king-janitorial-is-new-slave-labor-franchise.html
Jani King Janitorial Is New Slave Labor Franchise
Jani King franchise owners claim that Jani King will never tell them what their net income is going to be.
North Carolina Consumer News
PRLog (Press Release) – Nov 01, 2009 – Jani King Considered Worse Franchise To Invest In By Previous Investors
Jani-King makes some amazing promises to prospective franchise buyers,
but as many Jani-King Franchise buyers are now finding out the hard way,
“all that glitters is not gold.”
Jani-King has made major profits in the janitorial industry, by deceiving hard working
people, that are looking to invest in a franchise opportunity, or business opportunity that offers them a good return on their investment, and as a result of Jani-King’s deceptive
and unethical business practices, both present and past Jani-King franchise owners are now
making their complaints publicly known, after many past and present Jani-King franchise owners feel that they were deceived by the many false promises of high returns, made to them by Jani-king representatives.
Jani-King is gaining a national reputation for becoming
the new slavery franchise, that takes 20% of each franchise owner’s profit up front before the franchise owner get a penny, and to make matters worse, the franchise owner has to worry about labor cost, taxes, payroll preparation, cleaning product costs, and equipment cost.
Jani King franchise owners claim that Jani King will never tell them what their net income is going to be.
If these claims are true of Jani-King, then Jani-King has become another corporate franchise that is not much better that Pre Paid Legal and its deceptive business practices, that yielded a federal investigation, class action lawsuits, and a decline in its once trusted reputation.
Jani-King now faces lawsuits filed recently in Pennsylvania, Minnesota and California against Jani-King, contending that Jani-King misrepresented their offerings, because they do not have sufficient customers to guarantee each franchisee the amount of monthly cleaning business they purchase. Instead, the lawsuits allege, they breach their contracts by underbidding the amount of time and staffing required for each job, refusing to allow franchisees to inspect cleaning jobs or bid sheets before accepting or rejecting a job, offering geographically inconvenient jobs and unjustly taking jobs from one franchisee to re-sell them to others.
Jani-King has now been put on the North Carolina Consumer News alert watch for its deceptive business practices, and NC Consumer News will be following complaints and lawsuits being filed against Jani-King very closely.
SEIU: You and I can duel with words calling each other names. Meanwhile the items that are truly important are being neglected. So here's a thought, let's admit that YOUR an IDIOT! and move on.
As we all know, the SEIU is paying for 1st amendments and others attorneys fees. That is about to change. With a reasonable amount of confirmable information in my "formally nicotine stained hands", I believe that if there is no WIN in the "to be determined" issues that envolve the "aiwah" case, the money train has ended.
Because of the issues left for "aiwah" are primarily of little consequence in the big scheme of things, I feel that before the end of the year, Liz and her suicidal band of distraught attorneys will be asking to be removed from the remaining "class action" cases.
Once that happens, 1st amendment and others will have to find another lead attorney willing to take little or no money for a case that is already in disorder at best.
So, having said all of that, Jan-Pro is planning on asking the judge in the case to award a "summary judgement" against the plantiffs in the case for attorneys fees, filing fees, harm etc.....
So, they will be asking for more than 1million dollars. 1st amendment and his co-plantiffs don't have that kind of money, they will be going after personal assets and attempt to "make them pay".
So, I would like to see how SEIU "spins" this for 1st amendment.
!st amendment: I'm glad you are catching up on your reading. Have you had a chance to read the FDD yet, how about the Policy and Procedures, how about the U.S. tax code? No. Maybe you could become a FAME WHORE and sell t-shirts on the street corner with brokers license renewals.
Bad MOON RISING on your front in regards to money. Phone should be ringing any day now from "Liz and her drunk, disgruntled, poor mouthing, BMW driving band of attorneys" letting you know that she's about to file paperwork asking for removal from the remaining "class action" cases, which includes yours.
I wouldn't want to be in your shoes when your wife finds out how many jobs she'll have to work just so you can keep "pimping your cause"
If you have been ripped-off by any cleaning franchisor you can file complaints with the following agencies.
1. Federal Trade comission http://www.Ftc.Gov
2. Atorney General http://www.justice.gov/ag/
3. Another goverment agency that goes after Fraud http://www.stopfraud.Gov
4. There is also ongoing class actions against these cleaning franchisors. If you would like more information on this you can get my contact information by going to complaintsboard.com you will find my number and e-mail adress there
1st amendment: Your public service announcements should come with the following warning:
I am PIMPING MY ATTORNEYS because that's how I EARN MY KEEP and how I KEEP SEIU paying for my ATTORNEYS that I'm PIMPING!!!! OBAMA has warned me that he may be hazardous to the American People. (SEIU you can use that term for U.S. Citizens, Candians, Mexicans, Brazilians, Puerto Ricans)
1st amendment: How many more days will you be posting on these sites? I wonder, many things are happening, more are about to come to light. Not only has the SEIU decided that they are not going to pay for your attorneys' any more, there is an investigation into the misuse of UNION DUES in order to pay for those attorneys.
Obviously, things are going to go from bad to worse for you. Though in a way, I am sorry for you, in others I'm not. You set yourself up for this fall. You Lied by omission, you didn't disclose that you weren't paying for your own attorneys, you decided to mislead everyone into thinking that you were some CHAMPION of free speach, some righter of wrongs, something special.
At the end of the day, here's exactly where things stand for you.
You misrepresented how Jan-Pro dealt with you, you left out key parts including your lack of reading/abiding by the FDD and Policy and Procedures, you left out the fact that you were asked to be removed by the customer, you left out you got angry, violent, almost on a criminal level and were thrown out of the Jan-Pro office, you left out the fact that once you mislead your attorneys, they gave you the opportunity to "make it up" by PIMPING them to anyone and everyone that contacted you.
You mislead the viewers of this site and others, because you are not paying for these attorneys yourself, in fact, other than the basic filing fees, SEIU has paid for your attorneys lock, stock and barrel. Meanwhile, you have become a FAME WHORE and will continue this case for a short period of time if for none other reason than PRIDE and the fact that you want to attempt to retain your standing as the internet FAME WHORE!!!
I am looking for any one in Orange County and Los Angeles California to join me, or give me a phone # to a lawyer to file a law suit against Jani-King for been rip-offs.
I need help in Dallas, Texas against Cleannet USA, for beig ripped off too. Anybody wat to join me.
Yes, I would like to join you Ripped off in Dallas. If you know of others, have them post here. Let's continue posting until we can get enough people to respond.
For those people who want to take action and stop the cleaning franchisors from ripping you off here is a list of things that you can consider doing.
File complaints with
1. The federal trade commision. http://www.Ftc.org
2. File a complaint with the Attorney General http://www.justice.gov
3. File a complaint with http://www.stopfraud.com
There is curent lawsuits going around the country here is a list of some Law firms.
1. Dady and Garner http://www.dadygarner.com
2. http://www.Talamantes.org
3. http://www.llrlaw.com
4. http://www.Goldlawgroup.com
5. http://www.sturdevantlaw.com
There is many more outthere and more lawsuits being filled.