Bad Experience with Re-feel Cartridge Engineering Franchisee

If you are a part of Mc Donalds iam sure you would be making quite a good amount of money, but this is not the case with all the Franchisers in the market and in this article iam going to tell you why. I went through few Franchiser – Franchisee related magazines which gave me a idea on how all this stuff, and in simple words its something like a Company starts and offers others to open their Branches where in the main company gets bigger because of all the smaller stores selling their products. In this case while visiting a Franchisee Event i came through a company called Re-Feel Cartridge Engineering and went ahead into talks regarding the business and finally came to know that i was kind of scammed and me along with a cousin have been cheated to a amount of around 10 Lakhs Rupees.

The initial stuff was through email and phone and i felt i was in conversation with a large corporate house because at that moment they were claiming that they had around 70 Stores in India. When i asked them to show the backend stuff and give me more details about the business, i was first told to first deposit the initial Franchise Fees of 2,00,000Rs for getting access to everything and a meeting at their company after finalization. When any negative stuff was asked they would tell me that they were on the frontpage of FranchiseIndia magazine and i need to believe them. ok, well fine but in my personal view i feel that a business should always promote their products and also their franchisee instead of just promoting their own business which is of getting more franchisees.

While at kolkatta the CEO of the company told me that at the time of opening anyone of their team which is of mainly 4 guys would always be present and they would also be at our store’s opening and since they have got a collaboration with Times of India [Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd], we can expect a huge opening buzz and publicity. But the twist came just before a week of our Store opening when we called up Refeel to know who is coming down on the Store Opening Day and we were shocked with a message that in order to get a Press Publicity we need to invest another 1,00,000Rs for 1 day of buzz and no one from their main team came down to the opening and the promises previously made went fake. Isn’t the Franchiser required to take a share in these expenses or do some kind of publicity on the Franchisee behalf?

The biggest competitor to Re-feel in India is Cartridge World, which also advertises on Google Adwords but the ads are quite different and seeing the below screenshot you can understand why.

Cartridge Refilling

CartridgeWorld advertises a lot on Google along with their services details and Re-feel.in tries to promote their company in order to find new franchisees. In the current year i didnt find any Newspaper Advertisements or any other ads while most other Franchisers promote their products and services everywhere. Iam still wondering if refeel has any plans on this or not.

There are many more issues which i would be telling you guys one by one, in a series of articles because i personally feel that its not just me along but numerous franchisees who have been scammed out of their money. They need to answer this if not expect a lot more of negative publicity.