Am I doing something wrong, or is this a bug in the reply verb? If
it's the latter, I'm happy to file a bug report (while grumbling
loudly because this kind of thing seems to happen every time I try
AppleScript).
It's a long-standing bug, and has been reported. But the more bug
reports for the same bug, the better chance there are of it getting
fixed. But don't count on it getting fixed in Tiger.