I'll tell you something that is NOT a stretch. I made PayPal the successful company that it became. I posted before about this. What happened is that in early Jan. 2000, PayPal was still a very small company. They were oriented towards using Palm Pilots to "beam" money to pay for meals at restaurants. Anyway, I checked eBay and did a search. Only about a dozen auctions were using PayPal so I sent an e-mail suggesting that they change their orientation towards eBay auctions and using PayPal auction banners. I followed this up with a phone call to their marketing director, Jack Selby. I pitched the idea on the phone but for some reason I thought he was unenthusiastic about the idea.
Several days later I called Selby up again and stated that even though I might have come off as a "nutcase" that, dammit, my idea was a good one. I continued on in this vein while Selby was trying to get a word in edgewise. Finally he was able to interrupt me to tell me they LOVED my idea about using PayPal for eBay auctions and that they had already initiated the PayPal auction banners right after my previous phone call. Well, to make a long story short, by that March, PayPal grew at an astronomical rate to over 300,000 auctions on eBay. You want to know who made that company? Yours Truly. And anybody is welcome to contact Jack Selby to verify this account.
So my wanting a freebie Kindle (and free book and publication subscriptions for life) is hardly a stretch. If my idea is even a tenth as good as the one I gave to PayPal then it is well worth it.
Since Diner's Club had been doing that since the late 50's I'd say you were correct that they needed a new business model. I wasn't dissing you, sorry if it came across that way.