Delivered Goods, Mountain Delivered Goods, Own Delivered Goods, Delivered Goods Franchise Sold illegal disguised franchise & stole $11,250; refuses to return investment & using lawyer to drag out legal battle until victims are out of resources Prather California
Delivered Goods Franchise is a SCAM!!! They declare on their website that you can make your investment back in a few months, & if you work hard enough can make a 6 figure income very quickly. With that being said, we were not looking for a get rich quick scheme, we simply wanted to invest our money wisely so we could pass a business down to our kids.
Desiree promises customized marketing material, a business plan, websites, payment processing, and a business license. In the beginning, we were inclined to believe everything she told us, and even when we had to correct language & grammar errors on our marketing materials we still had confidence in our investment. We went over & above trying to make sure we would be successful with Desiree's franchise, and she constantly reassured us we would be, boy did she have me fooled!
While seeking local resources to help ensure we were prepared we were advised by high-level business professionals to acquire info about our new business, like our strategy for gaining and retaining customers, our process of scalability, guaranteed re-occuring income streams, and our target customer base. Once we realized Desiree didn't have these things in place we started to become concerned about our investment, yet we still continued on, reaching out to businesses, building our social media followings, running contests & searching ways to create guaranteed consistent cash flow.
But the TRUTH is, this is a scam not a business model because there is NO customer acquisition plan, NO proven marketing strategy, NO recurring profitability plan, NO scalability.
The moment we knew we had been SCAMMED was when we reached out to the other locations for tips. Desiree states on her Delivered Goods website and all over everyone's marketing material she has over 100 locations but if you research OVER 65 OF THOSE LOCATIONS ARE CLOSED!! (the ones that are operational are rarely profitable, and if they are they have added on services way beyond the scope of the franchise they bought in to. --- you can easily find these rare businesses cause they will be the ones Desiree swears by, even though they aren't using her franchise model at all!)
Regardless of what Desiree will try to convince anyone those locations are not closed because those people who invested $12,000 to $24,000 didn't work hard enough, its because what Desiree Crouse is selling is a SCAM! While she won't admit it, she has no clue how SEO, social media marketing, profit margins, or scalability operates. You are simply told if you work hard enough you will be successful, but that's simply not true.
The marketing items she provides are not customized they are just blank items ordered from Amazon, the business license is simply a sole proprietorship linked to your social security number that is registered online, the social media accounts are just regular accounts with no marketing campaigns associated with them, the copycat videos she makes can be created & downloaded with a free template on GoAnimate (she doesn't even pay to have the GoAnimate watermark removed), the payment processing system is just an account with big commerce, the websites are duplicates and the low coding quality actually causes them to look suspicious which limits their rankings in search engines, and you don't recieve a mobile app like she states on the site (that is an extra $400 per yr), there is nothing special about what Desiree is selling that you can't do own your own for A FRACTION OF THE PRICE!
It is not registered with the state of California as a Franchise nor as a SAMP (seller assisted marketing plan) even though that is how she is marketing this franchise, and she also refers to it as a franchise in her contract! (I can show you a copy) I believe this is because she would rather take her chances trying to fly under the radar selling a disguised franchise, instead of admitting that Delivered Goods does not have the successes, plan, or procedures to qualify as a legitimate franchise, in which case she would have to disclose all of this info before anyone invested a dime with her! She stated in a reply on the BBB that she sells 2 of these a week! That's almost $50,000 a week she is profiting, knowing she is taking advantage of people, encouraging them to make ill-informed decisions, and stealing money they have worked hard for! We had to attain a lawyer and she is STILL trying to drag this situation out until we no longer have the money to pursue it so that she can continue to break Franchise laws & SCAM people out of their hard-earned money.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Desiree
Prather,California,
United States
A Response to a Disgruntled Client
#2REBUTTAL Owner of company
Mon, May 21, 2018
It is not reasonable to say that the business’ we set up are “rarely profitable.” It takes hard work but our success rates are far higher than any other comparably priced business opportunity. If you look at some of our clients who have done extraordinarily well, you’ll see they actually do use our business model and our softwares still. For example, one of our clients “FSW” uses our dispatch software, and they have been very successful. However, there is far more than just one successful business that we have set up. Here is the names of just some of very successful clients: Nashville Delivers, Keystone Delivers, Tri Cities Delivered Goods, Grand River Delivered Goods, and their are many more.
Here is a video from one of them youtube.com/watch?v=u3MkAlQzdh4&t=4s talking about our dedicated staff and excellent service.
The restaurant delivery business is certainly growing, this is self evident with every growing delivery businesses such ubereats, grubhub, and postmates establishing their business in many different cities across the U.S. Here is a great article on how restaurant delivery has had double digit gains in the last five years alone: npd.com/wps/portal/npd/us/news/press-releases/2018/foodservice-delivery-in-us-posts-double-digit-gains-over-last-five-years-with-room-to-grow/.
As far as our marketing materials, we custom make them for each of our clients and let them preview the items before we buy them. They also have a chance to request any changes they seem fit, and we work with them the entire way. Now, obviously in draft, some marketing materials are prone to error, but never are they sent out in final form with incorrect grammar or information. They are also not just easily ordered off of amazon, this is just simply incorrect.
As the owner of this company, a business like this is how I actually started out my career. I started up a delivery business when I was a young single mom, and it provided me with a steady flow of income, it gave me the ability to work at home with my family, and I was able to do this instead of my very time consuming previous job. It was a huge opportunity for me and I know this works. Just check out this video describing the process: youtube.com/watch?v=U1hYhVBexUc&t=4s
We have set up many successful businesses with our business model, and we provide our clients with quality customer service and we make sure to stick with them throughout the years helping them in any way possible. It does take a lot of hard work to be successful, this is true, but to say that we thieves and trick people into business model is unsavory, and more than that just flat out false.
I encourage you to contact us, just search “Own Delivered Goods” and you will be able to reach our website. I guarantee we are not the company that this disgruntled previous client claims that we are. Thanks you for reading.