I ran a franchise company for many years, a car wash franchise, and we use to get the most ridiculous franchise buyers who thought they wanted a franchise. It seems we had to deal with these Kookoo birds because they have consumer rights and the Federal Trade Commission, which looks over franchising goes out of their way to let these consumers get away with these tall tales.

We had a potential franchise buyer wish to buy a franchise in Peachtree, GA. He filled out our form and said he would seek a small business loan and we discussed what it would take to put in a fixed site carwash. He would not reveal how much money he had available. He said he had excellent credit and had just purchased a new house. We instructed him to look into a business loan and if he could come up with the required capitalization we would proceed. Turns out the guy asked for a 1.6 million dollar loan and found out he needed 20% down, called us back and said he just did not have that level of funding. He of course needed $320,000. As it turns out after several hours of discussion that he did not even qualify to buy our mobile franchise unit and could not come up with $6,000 in real money. He worked for Motorola at the time. He probably has been laid off with the last wave of 20,000 people. The big problem here is how he dodged the question and never revealed he had no money, which would mean he did not qualify. He knew exactly what it would cost before he filled out any forms or even contacted us. He lied or assumed he could easily get financing for a small Business. He assumed also since he was black, which he later revealed that the SBA could give him a grant. Now that would be cool, I wonder how many franchises we could put in if that were the case? Of course he did not alert us to the fact that he was going to try to go out and get the money for free. If that were the case we would also not have been interested because he could simply walk away from the franchise later at any time without losing any money and we would have burned territory and lost brand name reputation in the high end neighborhood of Peach Tree, GA. If we disclosed this individual after the few phone calls we had with him, he would have received in fact an offer to buy our franchise from us. Yet once the facts were known we would never offer him a franchise. He couldn't have bought a franchise anyway. With less than $6,000.00 in cash he is not even in the ballpark.

We recently had a nice lady out of Brentwood, TN fill out our online form of interest in our franchise. When I called her back to discuss this, she said "What is the name of your company again, I went to so many web sites?" Well, this is interesting. She went to how many web sites and filled out how many forms generating time and work for every franchisor she went to. I almost hung up since she was obviously a looky lou, but I did not wish to be rude. After talking for a while it became very apparent that this individual was in the Image Consulting Business and wanted to sell us some type of services. After listening to her for quite a while about all her great credentials about her Image Business, I realized this lady was not interested in a franchise at all. She of course had a cover story for her inquiry. It went like this; "My son is working for someone else and my husband is a Podiatrist and I have PhD in Image Psychology, and we want to set up our son in his own business. He does not have a college degree. I do not think this type of Business is the type I would want him to do." The story seemed questionable since I was talking to her instead of her son. She did not know what her son would want in a franchise and wanted to continue to rule his life. Obviously a story to get me or someone who works for me to listen to her sales pitch. She had clearly misrepresented herself in her telemarketing sales ploy. Does this person deserve a UFOC of 155 pages and the $3.50 to express mail it?

On to finish this story; We already have a franchisee in Brentwood TN, who last year indicated he may be willing to sell part of his franchise. I told the lady she should call the franchisee and deal directly with him in a tr

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