I just found this site and am glad I did. Almost a year ago, my boyfriend and I decided to go into business together, specifically fitness. We started negotiating with Lady of America, and like others, flew down there, had meetings, got very excited and couldn't wait to get started with what we thought at that time was a great company.
Fortunately, we did not send them our $. We did however hire a lawyer to review the franchise agreement, which was only benefiting LOA. When we finally got to a point to negotiate the franchise agreement, which was around May, we sent it back to LOA and waited for a response. After a few weeks our attorney tried to contact them but never received a response. We then started calling LOA but got the run-around. Our calls to them continued through July. The only info we could get from them was that they had to finish up some paper work in Illinois, which would take about 2 weeks, then we could move forward. Again, this was told to us from May through August (that's about 12 weeks). At this point we had now spent about $4,000 on flights, attorney fees, etc.
By the time August rolled around, I decided to start doing some investigating on my own and found that LOA indeed was NOT a registered franchise in Illinois BUT also had absolutely no business soliciting in our State until they were registered. Any negotiating LOA did with us was in violation of the laws of Illinois.
Then we decided to speak with some franchise owners. Although some of them seemed to be happy, MOST of them were not and conveyed to us that you get absolutely no support once you've signed the dotted line.
I don't know how many other people in Illinois have spent money on LOA, but I can tell you this, after trying to get answers from them (LOA) and getting the run-around or voicemail or no return calls, I'm very glad we are not going to have to deal with LOA any further.
To date, which is now almost a year later, LOA is still not registered in Illinois. What does that tell you!!! I certainly can't tell anyone what to do but I would suggest that you be very very very very careful when dealing with LOA. They are not to be trusted and they DON'T CARE ABOUT YOU!!!
Unfortunately, it cost us quite a bit of $.
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