All ideasMore in Money

Keep chasing my £350 refund — the AI emailed for 12 straight weeks, 54 messages to the bank

Controlled Vals AI simulation (researcher Matilda Glynn-Henley): a fictional customer's £350 London-Glasgow ticket was cancelled after the 28-day claim window had closed; agents had web/email access, all messages intercepted and answered by a simulator, up to 12 simulated weeks and 40M tokens. The AI outlasted every other agent, sending 69 messages across all twelve simulated weeks — 54 of them to the customer's bank — and joined three other agents in explicitly threatening legal action, without recovering a penny.

£350at stake
This one went wrong. Read what happened so you don’t hit the same problem.

How it works

  1. Agent works the claim for 12 simulated weeks
  2. 69 messages sent, 54 to the bank
  3. Threatens legal action
  4. Claim never paid
  5. £0 recovered

Why it’s worth knowing

The AI’s distinguishing trait was stamina, not restraint: three months of simulated follow-ups aimed mostly at a bank that could not pay.

Where it’s from

Summarized from a public post on the-decoder.com. See the original ↗

Upgraded prompt

A ready-to-use prompt for this idea, built from research on what makes AI agents do the job right: who the AI should be, the exact steps, and a check to make sure it was done the way you wanted.

1Who the AI should be
2The prompt, with the steps
3The check when it’s done
Upgraded prompts are coming soon.

Try next

Every idea is a real post from someone who tried it, summarized in our words, with a link to the original. App names are swapped for plain words.