But clearly they are dropping the ball all the way to the third basement. If a piece of equipment is so bad that it's lack of reliability becomes a meme then you have issues.
What I really don't understand is that it seems that the franchisees are paying for the equipment manufacturer per service call. It would make much more sense to pay a fixed fee per ice cream machine per unit of time subject to some SLA. If you properly set up the incentive structure that makes the equipment manufacturer incentivised to seek ways to provide reliable, easy to maintain machines.
It is not like this is impossible. The same manufacturer sells reliable machines to all the other chains! So they can do it.
> The only people who seem to really care about this issue are customers.
And the franchisees? Who are losing money every time they are turning away costumers. (Not talking about the lost business because they are not seen as a reliable purveyor of ice cream, and people who crave ice cream go to some other place.) And losing money every time they call service for a piece of trash equipment.