Stuff the leaseholders and win an iPad – from one of the sponsors of ARMA-Q

Energy Renewals, which is sponsoring next month’s ARMA conference, is offering managing agents the chance to win a free iPad if they sign up for an appointment. That’s on top of incentive payments of between £3,000 and £50,000 a year if they offer up their blocks for new gas and electricity supplies.

Large, corporate clients – such as the larger, national managing agents – can do better still with payments of £50,000 to £250,000. And the brilliant thing is that the leaseholders don’t have to be told anything about these payments and can be relied upon to keep paying up in blissful ignorance.

Our original report on this can be read here

Now an anonymous ARMA member has written to LKP, indignant that Energy Renewals is one of the co-sponsors of ARMA’s conference “Success in a Consumer Focused Future”. The event will see the unveiling of ARMA-Q, the organisation’s ethical facelift, and the appointment of a regulator for the trade body.

The agent asks: “Michelle, how can ‘ARMA members lead the market through better regulation and how leaseholders will benefit from a revised set of professional standards’ if ARMA members go with the ‘bungs ‘r’ us’ boys?

“Is this another chink in ARMA’s armour, or just an oversight? It smacks of hypocrisy and sends mixed messages to everyone attending the conference, or associated with ARMA. It shines a bad light on those of us who backed ARMA from day one, sound in the belief that not only would they ‘provide absolute assurance that choosing an ARMA member will mean reliable, professional and cutting edge service’, but that they would also bring our profession into the 21^st century and establish a credible organisation that symbolises transparency and best business practice.”