(Image courtesy of Boy Genius Report)

Ruh-roh! If you closely follow the saga of Apple CEO Steve Jobs responding to customers’ e-mail inquiries, you might want to pay attention to this one. It turns out that at least one such exchange on Thursday is a complete fake, according to Apple’s own PR department.

Fortune’s Apple 2.0 blogger Phillip Elmer-DeWitt is reporting that a lengthy and somewhat abusive e-mail exchange reportedly between Apple CEO Steve Jobs and a disgruntled iPhone 4 customer named “Tom” first revealed on Thursday is a sham -- and that comes straight from Apple’s PR department.

On Thursday, Boy Genius Report published an e-mail exchange between a desperate iPhone 4 customer and someone claiming to be Steve Jobs. The subject, of course, is the reported signal attentuation problem of the new handset, which “Tom” tries in vain to get a resolution for. Instead, the impostor posing as Steve Jobs appears to grow angrier with each exchange:

"No, you are getting all worked up over a few days of rumors. Calm down."

"You are most likely in an area with very low signal strength."

"You may be working from bad data. Not your fault. Stay tuned. We are working on it."

"Retire, relax, enjoy your family. It is just a phone. Not worth it."

The widely reported exchange had many believing it was not Steve Jobs writing the erratic replies, which an Apple spokesman confirmed late Thursday. So be careful giving too much credence to those reported Steve Jobs e-mail replies!

Adding even more hilarity to this story, it turns out that AppleInsider is reporting that a similar e-mail exchange was shopped to them only two days earlier by a man in Virginia. Yes, you read that correctly: The guy wanted to get paid “an unspecified amount of money” for his e-mail exchange.

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