The stores that vanished from BAM’s map are a settings problem, not a purge, the franchisee says, and this site’s own captures support it: in three days nine listings came off or went on the map twenty-one times, one of them four times in a single day, and four more had their names corrected. The inference drawn alongside this site’s reporting, that stores came back because it reported them gone, is refuted below. What the message leaves standing is on BAM’s own paper. Owners pay $200 a month for a package whose third listed item is the store website, they may not run a website of their own, they have “no ownership interest” in the address, and the company’s training schedule gives software two hours out of forty-eight and the website none.
ASSERTEDa franchisee, anonymously: owners are rebuilding store websites on an unfamiliar platform with very little training, after “corporate homogenized everything”CONFIRMEDthis site’s own captures: of about 305 listings, nine came off or went on the map twenty-one times in three days, and four more had their names correctedPRIMARY SOURCEBAM’s 2026 disclosure document: $200 a month for “POS, Software, email,” a list that includes the store website; “no ownership interest” in the domain; two hours of software training in a forty-eight hour scheduleREFUTEDthis site’s inference that the stores came back because it reported them gone, and the line about a map corrected when watched
“Franchisee here. The reporting on a store being dropped from the website twice is actually a software defect/setting issue, not some corporate conspiracy to make stores disappear. It’s better explained by the fact that 200+ store owners are having to rebuild their websites on an unfamiliar platform with very little training on how to use it. Most owners aren’t especially tech savvy, so a lot of these settings and configurations are getting sorted out through trial and error as we try to put some personality back into our store sites after corporate homogenized everything.”
The correction is the small half of it. The other half is an owner describing a company that standardised every store’s website, moved the chain onto software the owners did not choose, taught them very little about it, and left them sorting out the settings on the public pages their customers use to find them.
From the night of September 14 to the evening of September 17 this site checked BAM’s public store locator every few minutes and kept a copy each time a listing came on or off it. Read listing by listing instead of story by story, the map moves constantly, and not around the stores in the story.
| Listing | Changes | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| Littleton, Colorado | 8 | Off and back four times on September 16, between the morning and the early afternoon |
| Port St. Lucie, Florida | 2 | Off the map before nine in the morning on September 17, back within about a quarter of an hour |
| McAllen, Texas; Clermont, Florida | 2 each | Off and back once each |
| Blaine, Minnesota; San Diego Central, California | 1 each | Added |
| Three listings marked “coming soon” | 5 | Two added and then taken off again, one added |
| Pueblo, Colorado; Glen Allen, Virginia; River Oaks, Texas; one “coming soon” listing | 1 each | Names corrected: “Pubelo” to “Pueblo,” a stray space taken out, “River Oaks” to “River Oaks (Houston),” a state added to another |
Thirteen of about 305 listings, twenty-five changes, three days. Correcting “Pubelo” to “Pueblo” is the work of someone tidying a listing. On September 14 and 15 this site reported that McKinney and McAllen, two open Texas stores, left the locator and returned, and gave the times from BAM’s own sitemap. Those pieces graded the events confirmed and left the reason open, which was right, and the events are unchanged. What fails is the inference set beside them, that each store “came back only after it was reported,” and the conclusion drawn from it, a map “edited by hand, corrected when watched.” At this rate of change the timing is coincidence. Three headlines also name BAM as the actor in the removals and returns, which reads as a decision by the company rather than a change on the company’s website. A note now sits on each of those pages, and on the September 15 piece, which described McAllen’s second removal the same way.
One removal is untouched by this. Southeast Tucson left the brand on September 12, BAM’s marketing director told every franchisee that evening the company was taking “swift, decisive, and appropriate action,” the listing came down that night, and it has not returned in the five days since. A removal that persists, after a public statement about that store, is a different event from a listing that blinks.
The migration cannot be checked from outside the company. The document governing the websites being rebuilt can be. Item 6 is what an owner owes BAM every month.
| What BAM charges | How much | 2026 disclosure document, Item 6 |
|---|---|---|
| Royalty | 6% | “6% of monthly Gross Revenue or a flat $500 per calendar month (whichever is greater)” |
| Brand Fund | 1% | “1% of monthly Revenues,” non-refundable. Item 11 says the fund “is not audited” and the council advising on it is appointed by BAM and “will not have any written documents” |
| Local marketing | 3% | “At least 3% of monthly Gross Revenue for local advertising and promotion of your Store” |
| Technology Fund | up to 1% | “Upon instituting, up to 1% of Gross Revenue for technological innovation and development.” BAM has not started one, “but may institute in our discretion” |
| POS, Software, email | $200 | “$200 per month.” Note 7 lists what it buys, and the third item is “Two email accounts, store website” |
So the owner pays for the store website every month and cannot take it elsewhere. Item 11: an owner “may not establish or operate a separate Website” and is given “a designated online presence within our Website” instead; the domain is “owned or controlled by us or our affiliates,” and “you will have no ownership interest in such domains or related digital assets.” If BAM approves a separate site, which it is “not obligated to do,” the work “must be performed by us, our affiliates, or approved vendors.” The franchisee’s account is that it is being done instead by two hundred owners who are not especially tech savvy, by trial and error, on the live pages.
Then the training. BAM prints the schedule in the same document: up to six days in Provo, forty-eight scheduled hours. Five classroom hours go to buying strategy, eight on-the-job hours to daily store operations. The line reading “Counter Operations, POS System and Software Training” has no classroom hours and two on the job, with an asterisk: “Additional software training programs may be provided to you online after initial training above is completed.” May be. No line in the schedule names the website, although the training team “will include… members of our website development team.” Two hours out of forty-eight, and a footnote, is what “very little training on how to use it” looks like in the franchisor’s own table. What BAM owes an owner after that is the first line of the same Item: “Except as listed below, BAM Franchising, Inc. is not required to provide you with any assistance.”
So the correction stands, and what is in its place is on the public record. Owners pay every month for a website they may not own, may not move and did not choose, and were scheduled two hours to learn the software and no hour at all to learn the site. When one of them gets a setting wrong the store drops off the only public map its customers use, and stays off until the owner finds the setting again.
The limit of this. The captures show the map churning. They do not show who is moving it, and they do not confirm the account of why. This site has not verified that a migration is under way, how many owners it touches, or what training was given for it, and BAM has said nothing in public about any of it. The fees, the website clause and the training schedule are from the 2026 edition, the current form; an owner who signed earlier signed an earlier version. Nothing here says any of these terms is unlawful. They are disclosed before signing, and other franchisors charge for technology and keep control of their own website. The writer’s account is graded as what it is, an assertion, printed because it comes from someone in a position to know and because this site’s own data supports the part it can test.
Sources. The message, received anonymously through this site’s right of reply, quoted in full above. This site’s copies of BAM’s store locator, eighteen of them from the night of September 14 to the evening of September 17, 2026, each saved whole with its time, and the listing-by-listing comparison run from them. BAM Franchising, Inc., 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document, issued April 8, 2026, Items 6 and 11, hosted here. The pieces corrected: September 14, McKinney, September 14, McKinney restored and McAllen gone, September 14, both stores, September 15, day four. On the Tucson removal, which stands: BAM’s message to its franchisees, the deletion. On what a franchisee owns: the corporate rail. This site’s right of reply is open to anyone named here, and to anyone who can show it something it got wrong.