So you're having a conversation with someone via reply, you interact with a shoppie that sends you a tell about you not having that item or whatever...and it steals your reply. It'd be great if shoppies and freaking Malinya in Arkham wouldn't be real tells, but echos that don't grab the reply slot.

In fact, I'm not sure I'd ever want to reply to a mob, unless they were imm-controlled.

Shopkeepers won't heist reply. Every other mob that actually uses tell still will.