Nationwide cleaning business Crewcare has launched an internal review after Stuff reported the concerns of unhappy franchisees. In the second part of his investigation, Steve Kilgallon reports on how the company protected its reputation against complaints.

When Karan Ganadeviya’s father fell ill with a serious blood disorder, he knew he had to return home to India for three months to care for him.

Ganadeviya had recently signed up as a franchisee with Crewcare, a nationwide cleaning business, but says he had waited almost six months to get his first site to clean and had grown unhappy with the business.

He emailed Crewcare’s general manager Paul Fuimaono asking to cancel their agreement, which involved a $15,000 franchise fee in return for a ‘guaranteed income’ of $60,000 a year, for two years, of work cleaning commercial premises. Ganadeviya had only had $500 of work by that stage…

Following Stuff’s initial reporting about Crewcare on Wednesday, a PR company working for the company provided a statement in which owner and chief executive David Serville said that “in light of the current reporting, the business is conducting an internal review to assess how we can better support our franchise owners”….