MAACO Franchise Complaints

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• A Juxtaposition:

  Driven Brands, owner of Maaco, acquires a second automotive collision repair and automotive paint franchise. With the acquisition of Carstar they have added an additional 240 Body shops to their Maaco network of 450. However the Carstar network has an initial franchise fee of 5,000 to 15,000 and pays royalty fees of .75% to 2% of weekly sales.

  Source: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/roark-capital-portfolio-company-driven-brands-inc-acquires-carstar-auto-body-repair-experts-300164488.html

  The initial Investment in Maaco is 250,000-350,000 with ongoing royalties of 8-9% weekly and additional weekly advertising contributions of $850-$1,500.
  Source: http://www.maacofranchise.com/

  Further they have just added an Initial Public Offering Executive to their team: Brian Nicholson

  http://www.drivenbrands.com/about.html

  After being bought sold and “invested in” by three private equity firms in the past 5 years and no member of C-level executives with a tenure of more than 4-years is this a Company worth investing in? Or just another pump and dump?

• M Waldrop, I understand you have dumped most of your shops on to someone else. Please let us know why you have dumped your stores when "I have multiple stores and continue to put my money into these stores"??? you no longer are invested in this wonderful business?

• My wife had her car fix at maaco after she hit a dear, the car looks bad and the guy at maaco in Augusta Ga had a very bad attitude, we took the car back over and over but it was the same out come. You talking about a rip off we paid lots of money to get our car fix but what we got was a mess, even when we took it back to the appraisal guy they had us to contact other people to try and get our money back that's just how bad the job is. Can any one tell me how to make contact with the coo of maaco because we don't have money to give away

• I don’t know where to start. I am not a writer so bear with me.

  Paint on the windows, carpet, inside the doors, tires (driver front and rear), wheel wells, brake caliper (driver front) and for the life of me I can’t figure out how the door sill trim got cracked it must have been hit with something.

  This is a 1996 BMW Z3 painted at 1650 Silas Creek Pkwy in Winston Salem, NC. 336 939 6474

  The project was wrote up by Alex Mabe. The job was to install an after-market bumper cover, address the driver side door for a dent and paint the car. I delivered the car on 1/15/2016. After 2 weeks or so (02/02/2016) I decided to call to see what was going on since I hadn’t heard a word. I talked to Alex and enquired on the progress of the vehicle.

  Alex said that he had called me 2 or 3 times to let me know the vehicle was ready. I never received a call from Alex. I asked him if he had left a message; Alex stated that with the type of phone that he had he was incapable of leaving a voice message……….

  WHAT the hell is that? At that point I knew something was wrong. Alex said that the car had been ready for a few days. I asked him about the bumper cover and he said that it was ready for pick up. I told him fine I would be there shortly. I live about 20 minutes away. I arrive at MAACO and see the car. The bumper cover was hanging off of the front of the car and had been PAINTED!

  I head inside to talk to Alex and the owner informed me that he had sent Alex home sick and that he would take care of the matter. So I informed the owner that I had just talked to Alex 20 minutes ago and he told me the car was ready for pickup. The owner explained to me how they tried everything to get the bumper cover on and that they could not do it. So why did you paint it? He blew up told me my vehicle was a piece of a crap only because he couldn’t install the bumper cover. I did not deserve this. I did nothing wrong.

  When it came to the point that there was nothing else that could be done all work should have ceased and I should have been contacted IMMEDIATELEY it never happened. Now I have to find someone else to install the bumper cover hope and pray it can be done without a respray, clean the carpets, fix the cracked sill trim and clean the paint off my tires, windows and brake caliper.

  This was by far the most unprofessional service I have ever had. I have had vehicles painted by MAACO before and never experienced such rude and disrespectful individuals in my life. I’m 59 years old.

  If you guys condone this type of behavior it is really sad. I did nothing to deserve this. If you guys don’t want people of color in your establishment just put up a sign. This is the only reason I can come up with for this treatment. I did not deserve this……

• I can not tell you what a miserable experience it has been to be in business with this rip-off operation. Franchising as performed by Driven Brands/Maaco is just a criminal enterprise. Go into business with these professional thieves. You will figure it all out ounce you have lost everything and they have sold your franchise to someone else without paying you a dime. Good luck, I am sure you are smarter than the other 500 folks who have lost their life savings to this rip-off in the last 7 years.

• I'm considering going into business with MAACO...I'm not sure if it's a WISE decision. Any body any one with information????? PLEASE

• Big issue 1. You do not go into business "with" Maaco, you go into business "for" Maaco.
  While you are working 80+ hours a week trying to get their tired, outdated, under-priced services, concept to earn you a living Maaco always gets paid 8-9% of your weekly gross, plus 1,200 in weekly advertising contributions. These royalties plus advertising is 20% of your gross, if you are pushing one million in annual revenue.

  Issue 2. Maaco churns through franchisees. In the past 10 years they have turned over 600+ franchise owners. They only have 450 shops. People keep trying, and failing. "Maaco Corp." doesn't fail, but plenty of people who own their concept fail. What you find, once you open, is that you are mostly on your own. They have practiced and practiced the legal angles of how little they have to provide to fulfill their end of a very lopsided contract. Opening assistance will mean someone with no shop or Maaco experience, but someone who worked in sales for a year and came to work for Maaco a couple of months ago. That person will have left Maaco before (if) you make you first year, but oh-well, churning Corp. personnel is not anything they can control. They did fulfill their part of the contract.

  Issue 3. You are in business for yourself, and with Maaco by yourself. Their pricing and public persona is "cheap". How do you make their price concepts work? Always a battle. Sacrifice quality, many Maacos franchisees do. Their shops, pricing, quality, owner philosophies are very inconsistent. Remember though, the other Maaco owners in your immediate area are your de-facto business partners. You are in competition with other Maacos. Legitimate body-shops are making money. With Maaco you will be scrambling for Maaco customers. You can only be as good as that run-down Maaco who has been in business for years, has low overhead costs, and can crank out horrible work at low costs and still make a living. Not you, your overhead is huge and the high fees Maaco gets from you you can not afford.

  4. Inconsistency is not a "franchise". Look at the Maaco shops, reputations and quality of work. Franchising is supposed to be about standards. Maaco only cares about Maaco Corporate revenue. Look at the Maaco undercover boss episode. It begins with the Maaco president claiming he has 7,500 employees, that is a fib. Each Maaco is independently owned and the employees are the individual owners. Corporate Maaco may have 100 employees. Further the employee of the franchisee who told about the cut-corners philosophy is the only one to get fired. The Franchisee was not reprimanded and no-one from Corporate Maaco responsible for oversight of the Franchise shop were reprimanded. So the Maaco undercover boss lies, or misleads, typical of these swindlers, does nothing to fix the problems at the high level they should, but runs off the shop employee who tells him the truth.

  I can go on about this poor concept for ever. I, like so many others figured I could overcome all these problems and establish a good Maaco with a good reputation and hopefully help the concept. It worked for three plus years. However the folks at Maaco just saw my success as something they could sell to another franchisee right down the road, without paying me. They just don't care about what makes sense for individual shop owners, only the contributions to their own bottom line.

  I wish there was a stronger way to get you not to make the same mistake that I, and so many others have made, buying into this outdated, overpriced, in-consistent concept called Maaco.

• You are "considering" buying into a franchise group of the "best" automotive aftermarket companies - there are no there's others - that exist. Yet if you question the executives and financiers, they all have their vehicles maintained and repaired at the Mercedes and Lexus dealerships. Having them repaired at the franchises they sell would void the vehicle certification. Guarantee these MBA executives do not use the franchises they sell.

• I have done nothing but lose money to this franchise. $299 to paint a car? 7.00/hr for labor? where else can you get 1980s prices and a 1970s business model? Great franchise to lose your ass.

• What do all these Maaco executives have in common?

  That they are all from countries other than the U.S.? YES
  - That they all have advanced college degrees paid for by their Poppies? YES
  - that they have grown businesses that they own or they are executives of? NO
  - That they have made others successful at growing their own franchise business - NO?
  - That they are all well paid for churning through folks who buy businesses from them? Yes
  - Who do not ever leave their well paid, executive, frat boy jobs, to own and work at, the franchises they pedal - Yes.

  Good Luck