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Diethelm Travel tears up its American
Express cards.
Had lunch yesterday with John Watson, CEO of Thailand based Diethelm Travel. He related to me how and why one of Thailand's leading travel companies stopped using and cut up its American Express cards.
These were previously used for expense purposes and the loss to AMEX will be considerable. The reason? Mr. Watson got irritating AMEX messages on his Blackberry. Like any competent CEO, Watson asked his personal assistant to contact AMEX and to please ask them to cease sending these messages to his cell phone. It appears that AMEX had a "normal" person handle the call who stated that Mr.Watson would have to contact AMEX on his own to request cessation of the messages.
In fact his PA again made the call (at Mr. Watson's request) and repeated the message, this time with a caveat of their own; please stop he messages or forfeit the Diethelm Travel account. They did not. True to his word Watson cut up his card and asked that all other card-toting individuals at Diethelm do the same.
Naturally they did. The result? A significant loss to AMEX and a bold but methinks necessary statement from Diethelm.
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