AI drafts go wrong in the same few places, and they are the places Australian consumer law cares most about. Here is a two-minute check you can keep beside the screen, with a worked example of a flawed draft and its fix.
The short answer
Read the draft once as the customer would, then check seven things before you send it: every price and fee, every date and timeframe, every promise, anything about refunds, warranties or rights, the facts about this customer’s order, whether each question was answered, and the tone and leftovers such as [ORDER NUMBER]. AI drafts go wrong in the same few places, and those places line up with what Australian consumer law says a business must not get wrong. Two minutes covers it.
This is general information for Australian small businesses, not legal advice. If a customer matter is heading towards a formal dispute, talk to your adviser.
Where AI drafts go wrong, and why it matters
An AI draft rarely falls over on grammar or structure. It fails on specifics. It did not have your price, so it wrote a plausible one. It did not know your delivery time, so it picked one that sounded reassuring. It has seen countless other businesses’ returns policies, so it wrote one of those instead of yours. The ACCC’s December 2025 snapshot on artificial intelligence describes “the continued tendency of LLMs to produce responses that contain factual inaccuracies, misleading references and biased information” as an ongoing issue.
Those failure points line up with what the ACCC says a business must get right. Its guidance on false or misleading statements says any information a business provides about its products or services must be accurate, truthful and based on reasonable grounds. Among the things it lists as claims not to get wrong are price; whether goods are in stock or when they may be supplied, including delivery timeframes; exclusions; and a consumer’s rights, warranties or remedies. It adds: “It makes no difference whether a business intends to mislead or not.” A draft you did not read is still a statement your business made.
The same ACCC snapshot, in a discussion of who is liable for what AI systems say, points to a 2024 Canadian case, Moffatt v Air Canada. The Civil Resolution Tribunal held the airline liable for a misleading representation its website chatbot made to a customer about a bereavement-fare refund. It is a Canadian tribunal decision, not an Australian ruling, but the lesson is plain enough: the customer was told something wrong, and the business, not the software, answered for it.
The Australian Cyber Security Centre makes a similar point from the security side. Its small-business AI guidance advises training staff to verify AI outputs for inaccurate answers, biased language, and unethical or irrelevant responses, and keeping a human involved in decision-making, especially in high-stakes or sensitive operations. The check below is what that looks like for a customer reply.
The two-minute pre-send check
Print this and keep it beside the screen. Read the draft once straight through as the customer, then go down the list. Each check is a question to ask of the draft.
- Does every dollar figure match what we actually charge? Prices, fees, postage, deposits, discounts. If you did not give the AI the number, it made one up. Check against your price list, not your memory.
- Is every date, timeframe and availability statement something we know? “In stock”, “will arrive by Friday”, “within 3 to 5 days”. Check the stock system and the courier estimate before any of these go out. If you do not know yet, say when you will know.
- Have we promised anything? “We will”, “guaranteed”, “I’ll make sure”, “you’ll have it by”. Each one is a commitment. Keep the ones you can meet and turn the rest into what you will actually do, such as “I’ll confirm by 2pm today”.
- Does it say anything about refunds, returns, warranties, rights or exclusions? This is where AI borrows other businesses’ policies. Compare it word for word with yours, and remember the ACCC’s warning that businesses cannot rely on store policies like “no refunds on sale items” to deny consumer guarantee rights.
- Are the facts about this customer right? Product, order or job number, what they said happened, what they have already paid. A draft that misremembers the complaint tells the customer nobody read their email.
- Did it answer every question they asked? Count the questions in the customer’s message and find each answer in the draft. The one it skipped is often the one they cared about most.
- Would I say this out loud, and is anything left over? Placeholders like [ORDER NUMBER], names or details the AI invented, three apologies where one would do, exclamation marks you would never type. Fix the tone, delete the leftovers, sign your own name. Our guide to making AI writing sound human lists the usual giveaways.
If checks 1 to 4 keep coming back clean, it is because you gave the AI nothing to guess at. There is a section on that further down.
A worked example: a cracked lamp and a Saturday deadline
This is a fictional example. The store, the customer, the product and the order details are invented to show the method.
The customer’s message
Hi, I ordered the brass Arlo table lamp in your spring sale and it arrived today with a crack right across the base. It wobbles and I don’t think it’s safe to use. I’ve got people coming over on Saturday and the lamp was meant for the living room. Can you get a replacement to me before then? Also, do I need to post the broken one back? Thanks, Sam
The AI draft, as it came back
Hi Sam,
We are so incredibly sorry to hear this!! That is absolutely the last thing we want for our valued customers and we completely understand how frustrating it must be.
Unfortunately, as the lamp was purchased during our sale, sale items aren’t eligible for refunds. However, we’d be more than happy to organise a replacement for you! Please return the damaged lamp to us within our 30-day damage claim window using the returns portal. A $15 return postage fee applies and will be deducted from any credit. Once we receive the item, a replacement will be dispatched by Friday.
Please quote order number [ORDER NUMBER] in all correspondence.
Thanks so much for your patience and understanding, and once again, we are so sorry!
Warm regards,
The [STORE NAME] team
It reads smoothly. Going down the checklist, almost every line has a problem.
| What the draft said | What’s wrong | What to send instead |
|---|---|---|
| “Sale items aren’t eligible for refunds” | The store has no such policy; the AI borrowed it. The ACCC says businesses cannot rely on policies like “no refunds or exchanges on sale items” to deny consumer guarantee rights. Sam did not ask for a refund anyway. | Delete it. Say the sale price makes no difference to how you will fix a damaged lamp. |
| “Within our 30-day damage claim window” | Invented. There is no such window, and exclusions are one of the things the ACCC lists as claims businesses must not get wrong. | Delete it. |
| “A $15 return postage fee applies” | Invented. The store’s own policy is no charge to the customer for damaged items, including postage. | Say there is no charge, and whether you need the lamp back at all. |
| “A replacement will be dispatched by Friday” | Nobody checked stock or the courier, and the ACCC expects statements about supply and delivery timeframes to be accurate. It also makes the replacement wait on the return, which Sam never agreed to. | Check stock and the express estimate, then give a real date. If you cannot know yet, say when you will. |
| Nothing about Saturday | Sam asked one clear question: can it be here before Saturday? Dispatch by Friday does not answer it. | Answer it directly, with a yes, a no or what you can do. |
| “Return the damaged lamp” | Answers Sam’s second question with a process the store does not use. For damaged items the store asks for a photo. | Ask for a photo and tell Sam what to do with the lamp. |
| [ORDER NUMBER], [STORE NAME] | Placeholders left in. Easy to miss when the rest reads well. | Fill them in or remove the sentence. |
| “So incredibly sorry!!” and a second apology at the end | Two apologies, four exclamation marks and “valued customers”. It sounds like a template, not a person. | One plain apology, then what you are going to do. |
The corrected reply
Before writing it, the person sending the reply checked two things: stock (one brass Arlo on the shelf) and the express courier estimate to Sam’s suburb (due Thursday). The reply is only as good as those two checks.
Hi Sam,
Sorry the lamp arrived cracked. That should not have happened, and the sale price makes no difference: we will put it right.
We have a brass Arlo in stock. I will send it by express post this afternoon, and the courier’s estimate is Thursday, so it should be with you before Saturday. I will send you the tracking number once it is on its way, and if anything changes with the delivery I will tell you straight away.
No need to post the damaged one back. Could you reply with a photo of the crack? Once we have that, please dispose of the lamp rather than use it with the base cracked.
Kind regards,
Jess
Tallowood Home (order 4471)
If the stock check had come back empty, the honest reply would have been shorter and less welcome: “I can’t get a replacement to you by Saturday. Here are your options.” A true answer that disappoints is better than a false one that pleases, because the false one becomes a second complaint next week.
Set the AI up so there is less to fix
Most of the mistakes in that draft have one cause: the AI did not have the fact, so it produced a plausible one. You can cut the number of fixes a long way by supplying the facts and forbidding guesses.
- Keep a facts sheet. Half a page: current prices and fees, delivery timeframes by service, your returns and warranty wording exactly as your terms state it, opening hours, and a line listing things you never promise (exact delivery days, outcomes you cannot control). Everyone on the team pastes it into the prompt every time. Update it the day something changes.
- Forbid unsupplied facts. Tell the AI not to state any price, date, stock position, policy or promise you have not given it, and to write [CHECK] wherever the reply needs one.
- Ask for a shape, not just a reply. Answer every question in the order asked, one apology at most, plain Australian English, a word limit.
Here is an instruction block you can adapt. The facts are the fictional store’s; replace them with your own.
You are drafting a customer reply for Tallowood Home, an Australian online homewares store. Use only the facts below. Do not state any price, fee, delivery time, stock position, policy, warranty term or promise that is not in these facts. If the reply needs one you do not have, write [CHECK] in its place. Answer every question the customer asked, in the order they asked them. If something has gone wrong, apologise once in plain words, then say what we will do. Plain Australian English, under 150 words, no exclamation marks, signed off with a first name.
Facts: Damaged or faulty items are replaced or refunded at no cost to the customer, including postage. For damaged items we ask for a photo and do not need the item returned. Standard delivery is 3 to 6 business days; express is 1 to 3 business days to metro areas. Current stock and courier estimates: [CHECK]. Order details: [CHECK].
The [CHECK] markers are the point. They turn invisible guesses into visible gaps. Your eye catches [CHECK] in a sentence; it does not catch a plausible “3 to 5 business days”.
Supplying facts is one half of a good prompt. The other half is what you leave out: our companion article on what to remove before pasting a customer’s email covers the privacy side, and the two habits go together.
When to write it yourself
Some replies should not start with an AI draft, however good the prompt. Write these yourself, and have one person own the thread from start to finish:
- The customer mentions a lawyer, a regulator such as the ACCC or your state’s fair trading office, an ombudsman, a chargeback or a public review.
- The message involves hardship, health, bereavement or safety. A wrong tone here does more damage than a wrong fact.
- A refund is disputed, or you and the customer disagree about what happened. Every word is now a position.
- A wrong word would create a commitment: a quote for custom work, a variation to a job, a cancellation, anything an insurer or another business will later read.
- It is the customer’s second or third email about the same problem. They want to know a person is reading.
Public replies to Google reviews deserve the same care, because every future customer can read them. Our guide to asking for Google reviews includes a short section on replying.
You can still ask an AI to tidy the tone of a reply you wrote, provided the substance stays yours. The ACSC’s advice to keep a human in the decision applies most where the stakes are highest, and these are those cases.
If your team is drafting the same kinds of reply all day, the checklist starts to feel like a tax. That is usually the point where a properly built workflow, with your facts sheet built in and a review step before anything is sent, does the job better than a chat window. AppliedAgents builds these for Australian businesses. For a few replies a week, the habits above are enough.
Sources
- Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, False or misleading statements
- Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Repair, replace, refund
- Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Recent developments in artificial intelligence – industry snapshot (December 2025)
- Australian Signals Directorate’s Australian Cyber Security Centre, Artificial intelligence for small business
This article is general information, not legal advice. Sources were checked on 26 October 2026. The worked example is fictional; your own prices, policies and terms are the ones to check against.
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