It's never ever been like that in SM, can't say anything else about any other franchises for sure... although some people "say" that about CD, whetehr it's true or not I don't know.
The only thing is, support. If I do a job that results in a complaint and I've not used SM products, they cannot and will not give me any support on a technical level. Totally understandable, but what the hell, I don't really get complaints, never had an issue that wasn't very simple to resolve with a re-visit and quick zip round to catch a few spots I'd missed. Can count the times that's happened on the fingers on half a hand
The biggest drawback with a franchise is when you have a really good month followed by a really crap month. In the crap month you're paying fees that stretch your cash flow. Of course, the silver lining is that when you panic and pull out all the stops to get more work in the following month after that, you're paying less fees due to your previous crap month so your profit margin is better.
There are so many misconceptions about franchising, it makes me laugh some of the bowlocks I read on here
