June 18, 2007
Brown Franchisees Still Seeing Red
In the continuing Brown saga, a lawsuit filed by a group of UPS franchisees alleges that the franchisor’s business model undermines them by allowing customers to print and pay for their own shipping labels online, and then drop off packages for free at a UPS Store. UPS, the suit claims, then pays them a fraction of the actual cost of the package handling, leaving franchisees to try to eke out a profit on their document and printing services – where, they say, they can’t compete with pure document service companies like FedExKinko’s.