[95723] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Attn: Your $50-Costco Points-Will Expire-in 48-Hours! Claim-Here.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (CostcoRewards)
Fri Feb 24 08:48:25 2017
Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2017 06:53:23 -0700
From: CostcoRewards <CostcoRewards@newmemberbonuspoints.com>
To: mit-talk-mtg@charon.mit.edu
Reply-To: CostcoRewards@newmemberbonuspoints.com
<html>
<head>
<title>Member-Rewards</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<style type="text/css">
#Top1 {
font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;
font-size: 24px;
font-weight: bold;
font-style: italic;
text-align: center;
}
#Next {
font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;
font-size: 15px;
}
#Mid1 {
font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;
font-size: 15px;
text-align: center;
}
#Next3 {
font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;
font-size: 15px;
}
#Bottoms {
font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;
font-size: 7.9px;
}
</style>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" leftmargin="0" topmargin="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0">
<table id="Table_01" width="570" height="583" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tr>
<td>
<center><a href="http://yourpoints.newmemberbonuspoints.com"><img src="http://see1.newmemberbonuspoints.com" width="450" height="103" alt=""></a></center></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td id="Top1">Costco Rewards-Program</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td id="Next"><br>
Greetings mit-talk-mtg@charon.mit.edu,<br></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td id="Mid1"><p><br>
The reason that we've reached out to you today is to make you-aware that you have $50-in Costco-Points available which will be-expiring at the end of the day tomorrow and we did not want you to miss out on this fantastic-special.</p>
<p>All that you need to do to claim-your bonus now is follow the link-provided below here and fill-out the brief-questionnairre that follows...it's that-easy!</p>
<p><br>
<span style="font-weight: bold"><a href="http://yourpoints.newmemberbonuspoints.com">Go Here to Get Your Costco-Bonus Right-Away</a></span></p></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td id="Next3"><p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>If you're looking.to no-longer receive these-rewardads-you <a href="http://zwke7.newmemberbonuspoints.com">can.visit right-here</a>.<br>
-__2885 Sanford Avenue_SouthWest #4O442-Grandville, M.I. #49418.</p>
<p> </p></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td id="Bottoms"><p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Chenault, who’s been CEO since January 2001, when Bill Clinton was president, declined to be interviewed for this story. He’s assured investors that Amex would absorb the losses not just because it was a strong company but also because of its aura. “Our brand is globally recognized,” he said in March. He has a point: Amex is a rarefied company. Its cardholders are more affluent than users of Visa or MasterCard. In 2014, Amex members spent an average $144 per purchase, compared with $84 for Visa users and $90 for MasterCard holders, according to the Nilson Report, a publication that tracks the card industry. Because it delivers higher-spending customers, Amex charges merchants an average swipe fee of 2.5 percent per transaction. Visa and MasterCard settle for 2 percent for their credit cards. Amex also heavily advertises to convince the public that its cardholders are superior to those who dare use other kinds of plastic, sponsoring Taylor Swift music video apps and drafting Tina Fey to portray an adorably frazzled, Liz Lemon-like shopper in ads for its new Amex EveryDay This formula has made the company tremendously profitable. Its return on equity, a measure of a bank’s profitability, was 28 percent in the second quarter, higher than that of all its card-issuing rivals. In May, Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, the credit card company’s largest shareholder, reiterated his support for Chenault. “Amex is still a very, very special company,” he said, adding, “Ken has done a sensational job.” But Amex is in a situation that’s becoming increasingly familiar to companies with formerly impervious brands, such as Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, and McDonald’s. For decades, they would charge extra for their products. Today their toothpaste, sodas, and burgers no longer have the same cachet. Worse for American Express and other credit card companies, technology is making the physical manifestation of their brand invisible. Who cares what card you have if you’re paying for your expensive meal through your smartphone’s digital wallet?</p>
<p>As Amex shares slumped, ValueAct Capital, a San Francisco activist hedge fund, disclosed in August that it had almost $1 billion of Amex stock. Jeffrey Ubben, the fund’s chief executive, has yet to disclose his plans. But he has a history of investing in companies and shaking things up, which has been followed by the departures of CEOs, most notably Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer. For Chenault, this may be a moment to reflect on whether he can be most helpful to Amex’s other shareholders by sticking around and fighting, or by making a graceful exit. Chenault frequently evokes his 165-year-old company’s legacy. Three years ago, he appeared onstage at the American Museum of Natural History for what was billed as a “fireside chat” with Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg. It was a tech event, so Chenault didn’t wear his usual suit and tie. Instead, he showed up in a brown zipper-neck sweater and an open-collar shirt. Yet his dark slacks were creased, and his shoes gleamed as if they’d just been polished. “How do you innovate?” Sandberg asked him.</p>
<p>Smiling, Chenault replied that Amex knew a bit about the subject. “We didn’t start off in a dorm room or a garage,” he said. “Probably in a stable.” Founded in 1850, Amex transported packages from the East to the West Coast by stagecoach. It was a nice business until President William Howard Taft signed a bill in 1912 allowing the U.S. Post Office to carry packages at lower rates. Luckily, Amex had developed a product called the Traveler’s Cheque, which people could purchase in the U.S. and cash in Europe. Amex transformed itself into a global travel agency, planning footloose Americans’ trips, finding them English-speaking doctors in Europe and bottled water in Africa, and, for the right price, according to a 1956 Time cover story, organizing tours of Pygmy villages in Africa—anything to sell more Traveler’s Cheques. In 1950, Diners Club introduced the first multipurpose charge card. Some at Amex thought their company should respond with its own card; others feared this would cannibalize the traveler’s check. After much hand-wringing, Ralph Reed, who ran Amex at the time, approved the first Amex card, which appeared in 1958. Five years later, there were a million cards “in force,” as the company likes to say. Amex has faced trouble before. In the wake of the 1987 stock market crash, merchants started to turn away the Amex card because of its hefty swipe fees, which at the time were as high as 3.5 percent. In 1991, a group of 100 restaurateurs in Boston staged what became known as the Boston Fee Party. “There was a big recession going on,” says Steve DiFillippo, owner of Davio’s, a popular Italian restaurant in the city and one of the Fee Partiers. “The garbage guys and the meat guys were helping us out, but American Express wasn’t doing anything for us.” Visa did its best to make the situation worse with an ad campaign featuring celebrity chefs such as Wolfgang Puck and other merchants who didn’t take Chenault led the effort to fix the problem. A native of Hempstead, N.Y., he was a graduate of Bowdoin College in Maine and Harvard Law School. In a Businessweek profile published three years before he became CEO, his college roommates and Amex colleagues described him as someone who was determined to rise to the top while maintaining tight control over his personal brand, never losing his temper or even raising his voice.</p>
<p>\\</p>
<p> </p></td>
</tr>
</table>
<img src="http://trc.newmemberbonuspoints.com/redirect.php?email=mit-talk-mtg@charon.mit.edu">
</body>
</html>
