The Error
Who Gives A Crap, the $100M+ revenue Australian toilet paper brand, suspended its AI email agent after it sent a customer a price increase notification claiming their subscription would more than double in cost.
The email stated prices would rise from $66 for 48 rolls to $69.50 for 24 rolls, effectively lifting the per-roll price from $1.38 to $2.90. That is a 110% increase, not the "few dollars" price rise the company actually implemented.
Co-founder Simon Griffiths confirmed the error to the customer and pulled the AI tool from production.
What Actually Happened
Who Gives A Crap did raise prices across its range, driven by input cost increases. Most customers received accurate communications detailing increases of several dollars per delivery. The AI agent generated an incorrect version for at least one customer before the company caught it.
Why This Matters for Sales Teams
This is what unmonitored AI implementation looks like in customer communication. The tool worked fine until it did not, and the failure hit a customer-facing channel with pricing information.
Sales and CX teams are deploying AI email automation at scale. Gartner reports 65% of B2B organisations now use some form of AI-generated customer communication. When those systems fail, they can damage customer relationships, create compliance issues, or tank deals.
Key risks:
- Revenue impact: Incorrect pricing in automated emails can trigger contract disputes or lost renewals
- Compliance exposure: Automated communications in regulated industries (finance, healthcare) carry legal risk
- Customer trust: One bad email can cost more than the efficiency gains from automation
Who Gives A Crap caught this quickly and suspended the tool. That is the right move. Many teams would have let it run while they "monitored for patterns."
The Broader Context
The company bootstrapped before raising a $30.7 million Series A in 2021 and has maintained strong unit economics since. Revenue hit $100M+ with 2,700% growth between founding and 2021. That scale requires automation, but this incident shows the cost of getting implementation wrong.
For sales leaders evaluating AI tools: build approval workflows for customer-facing content, set price change thresholds that trigger human review, and have a kill switch ready. Who Gives A Crap used theirs. Make sure you have one too.