“Art of the Bad Email”: An AT&T Story

For his 21st birthday, I upgraded my son’s iPhone to a 16 Pro, and as instructed by AT&T, he then sent his old phone in for credit. Within a week or so, I received this celebratory assurance from AT&T:

Take note of the three guarantees (all important to me) that AT&T included in their update:

1. “We received your old phone” and “Thanks for turning in your old phone.” Thus, AT&T received it.
2. “It’s in good working condition.” Thus, AT&T checked it, AND (presumably) I’ll get credit for it.
3. “You’re good to go” and “So there’s nothing else for you to do.” Thus, my transaction with AT&T appears to be complete.

AT&T’s Email Robots Start Twisting the Truth

So imagine my surprise when I received this AT&T email AND text about a week later (both on the same day and within minutes of each other):

So what is AT&T saying? It’s difficult to tell considering the second email and the text say very different things. In the context of the first email, these were my “confused” interpretations of AT&T’s followup(s):

1. (second email) “We originally told you that your phone is ‘in good working condition,’ ‘you’re good to go,’ and ‘there’s nothing else for you to do,’ but now, we’re telling you that ‘the Turn-in … was not in the box.’”
2. (text) “We originally told you that your phone is ‘in good working condition,’ ‘you’re good to go,’ and ‘there’s nothing else for you to do,’ but now, we’re telling you that ‘you didn’t send back the correct item.’”
3. “Your old phone will be sent back to you as we’ve: a) [text] ‘returned it to you’ or b) [second email] ‘returned the item back to you.’”

Obviously, this raised several questions:

1. How is it possible that AT&T “received [my] old phone,” but a week later, it’s “not in the box.”
2. How is it possible that AT&T “received [my] old phone,” but a week later, I “didn’t send back the correct item.”

Phishing Scam? No, No, No … Glitch!

Initially, it looked like a phishing scam to me because:

1. the text/second email contradict the first email.
2. the text/second email are grossly inconsistent.
3. it’s difficult to believe that a major tech company would incompetently send two inconsistent communications within minutes of each other.
4. the second email says the item “was not in the box” but then contradicts this with “we’ve returned the item back to you.”
5. after the salutation “Hi,” the first word–“it’s”–is not capitalized. This looks fishy considering many salutations/greetings are followed by a capitalized word. While this might be debatable, GrammerBook.com (in a comment) notes that “We favor capitalizing the first word after the greeting whether you use a dash or comma.”
6. the text/second email omit commas where they are grammatically required:

–“Please send the correct phone back to us in good physical and fully functional condition [no comma] or we’ll charge you the remaining ….” (From Grammerly: “Always place a comma before ‘or’ when it begins an independent clause.”)

–“To send the correct item back to us [no comma] chat with us …. ” and “To get a new shipping label [no comma] chat with us ….” (From Grammerly: “After a dependent introductory clause, we use a comma to separate the introductory clause from the independent clause.”)

To get answers, I called AT&T and spoke to a genuinely kind [and attempting to be helpful] CS representative. He suffers no guilt in AT&T’s email trainwreck. With that said, here’s a reenactment (as I remember it) of our conversation:

AT&T Rep: “Sir, we couldn’t accept your trade-in. It was damaged.”[1]

Me: “But you sent me an email that says you DID accept it, and it was in ‘good working condition.’”

AT&T Rep: “Sorry sir, but we can’t accept it.”

Me: “So why did you send the first email?”

AT&T Rep: “Probably a glitch in the system.”

A “glitch” … a terrible excuse for not one but three contradictory correspondences. So that’s three messaging “glitches,” plus a fourth “glitch” for the terrible writing. Then, I asked AT&T to return my son’s phone, to which they replied:

AT&T Rep.: “Sir, we can’t return the phone.”

Me: “Why not?”

AT&T Rep.: “It says so in our terms of service.”

Me: “Hold on, hold on … I have a text AND an email that both say AT&T has ‘returned the item’ back to me. But now you’re saying AT&T won’t be returning it?”

AT&T Rep.: “Sorry sir, we can’t return the phone.”

Me: “But you told me TWICE that you’re returning it!”

AT&T Rep.: “My apologies. I don’t know why you received that information.”

AI Writers Suffer a Human Quality … They’re Faulty!

So that’s three emails from AT&T, all misleading, all full of misinformation, each contradicting the other, AND all part of some “glitch.” That glitch is obviously automation or (maybe) AI, and while I’m not suggesting that humans should pen individual emails to AT&T customers, I am going to suggest that this underscores the importance of “good” human writers. Not only are these emails glitchy in terms of coherence, they’re also glitchy in terms of quality, substance, and grammer. In a way, it reminds me of the AI writing I’ve been seeing lately … not glitchy like these emails, but glitchy in terms of depth, creativity, and passion.

[1] Full transparency … the phone was damaged. My son neglected to mention that the back of the casing was cracked. Regardless, AT&T told me differently in the first email (“It’s in good working condition”) and something completely different in the follow up text/second email (either I “didn’t send back the correct item,” or the phone “was not in the box”). No mention was ever made regarding damaged goods.