Hi Gents (& Lady),

Some interesting points which I tend to agree with on the whole, Diagnostics today is not something that can be taught on a two week training course and the equipment available from most aftermarket diagnostic tool companies would fall way short of the mark to equip a dedicated diagnostic specialist to do the job (apart from maybe one!)

Also the old route for sourcing franchisees was often from career backgrounds quite diverse from the actual product or service the franchiser was offering.

When I joined Hometune many years ago I was in the minority being from a motor vehicle background and having city & Guilds in motor vehicle craft studies, most the other franchisees struggled in the early days after their training and relied heavily on the technical support offered So I doubt it could work today, Especially as most garages now have scanners and the easy quick code reads that used to earn us good money are now gone. Which means a much higher level of service would be needed.

I have often expressed to friends and colleagues that Hometune missed an opportunity as technology was changing to grab diagnostics by the scruff of the neck and get their fleet trained up early while the majority of garages were struggling to come to terms with this new technology. The move towards unleaded petrol, catalytic converters and lambda sensors, closed loop systems etc were ignored in favour of generating more service work. This amongst other things led to the disbandment of the fleet and now any operators that are left are scratching a living doing diagnostics, but most fell by the wayside.

In conclusion, for somebody to make a franchise of this nature work it would take a massive investment in support staff a major investment in the right mix of equipment and an abundance of prospective franchisees that are already fairly proficient at vehicle fault finding and diagnostics. The cost of setting this up and maintaining a sufficient level of support would make franchise management fees so high that it would hardly be worth taking a franchise in the first place and the people who would qualify are probably running their own successful diagnostic businesses too.

Mike