Be wary of Fetch Pet Care franchise purchase
Complaint
anonymous
Country: United States
Fetch! Pet Care franchise ownership
Be very cautious before you get engaged with the purchase of a Fetch! Pet Care franchise. They are experiencing a lot of problems due to compliance issues with each individual state labor law. In my experience the current Fetch! franchise owners tend to be extremely responsible, caring and animal-dedicated individuals. It's the corporate office you need to be cautious of.
The sales numbers they "projected" tended to be grossly inflated from the actual numbers of franchise owners we spoke with. Working with pets seems like such a wonderful way to make a living; however, please, help yourself by going through a thorough due diligence process. Learning your state labor laws, the cost of insurance (liability, damage, workers comp., unemployment, etc., etc., etc.) the increasing franchise fees each year you're in business, the difficulty of finding/retaining quality Pet Sitters, the number of fixed monthly expenses, and understanding the massive responsibility/stress of caring for people's homes and dearly beloved pets.
As any small business owner will tell you, all of the "small" monthly expenditures/taxes that you don't always figure, really eat into your margin and make it difficult to be profitable.
If you don't think the economy is having a significant effect on the number of people wanting to pay a premium price for pet care, you're wrong. Not to mention the significantly reduced number of people actually needing pet care because they can afford to go away! Understandably, when people do travel, they are going out of their way to find less expensive alternative arrangements (family, friends or even the dreaded kennel).
Working with animals can be very enjoyable, it's the experience working with this franchise that is so disappointing.
Be very cautious before you get engaged with the purchase of a Fetch! Pet Care franchise. They are experiencing a lot of problems due to compliance issues with each individual state labor law. In my experience the current Fetch! franchise owners tend to be extremely responsible, caring and animal-dedicated individuals. It's the corporate office you need to be cautious of.
The sales numbers they "projected" tended to be grossly inflated from the actual numbers of franchise owners we spoke with. Working with pets seems like such a wonderful way to make a living; however, please, help yourself by going through a thorough due diligence process. Learning your state labor laws, the cost of insurance (liability, damage, workers comp., unemployment, etc., etc., etc.) the increasing franchise fees each year you're in business, the difficulty of finding/retaining quality Pet Sitters, the number of fixed monthly expenses, and understanding the massive responsibility/stress of caring for people's homes and dearly beloved pets.
As any small business owner will tell you, all of the "small" monthly expenditures/taxes that you don't always figure, really eat into your margin and make it difficult to be profitable.
If you don't think the economy is having a significant effect on the number of people wanting to pay a premium price for pet care, you're wrong. Not to mention the significantly reduced number of people actually needing pet care because they can afford to go away! Understandably, when people do travel, they are going out of their way to find less expensive alternative arrangements (family, friends or even the dreaded kennel).
Working with animals can be very enjoyable, it's the experience working with this franchise that is so disappointing.
Comments
His corporate staff follow along as they see him terrorize people, lie, cheat and steal. I had to sue him for the money he owed me and the judge that presided over the case said I was victimized by him and his staff! He made slanderous non-true statements about me to keep me out of the industry.
BEWARE of all of them!
Instead run your own ethical business!
That is simply taking away your rights to a free market and goes to show they recognize their system is flawed, when they have to penalize their CLIENTS and charge them for using a sitter outside of Fetch! that they thought good enough to contract with in the first place. Really, a company charging their Clients a fee, where is the reponsibility of the sitter? Oh and btw the sitter only get 40-50% of the total while Fetch! Takes the rest. For what, a finders fee? Sitters that would agree to this knowingly boggles my mind. What happened to providing exemplary customer service and maintaining a client base that way? This is just plain and simple a get rich off the sweat of others scam. STAY CLEAR, VERY CLEAR.
The fact is 8 out of 10 franchise businesses succeed, while only 2 out of 10 independent business succeed. A proven statistic... lot of misinformed morons on here.
To be fair, most large pet sitting companies do the exact same thing that Fetch! does to their IC's, which is why I always suggest that when interviewing a pet sitting company, ask what the monetary split will be between the person you book with and the actual sitter that will be caring for your animals. If they're giving the IC less than 70% and are not passing on to them the extra fees collected for additional services and weekend/holiday hours, look elsewhere. Do not support worker exploitation.