(Advice) Reneging acceptance through email?

Hi. What are your thoughts on reneging an acceptance through email? I'm in a spot where I want to back out from an offer I accepted but want to avoid doing it through phone call. I don't have any relationship with the employees/recruiting team so was thinking of just shooting an email to my assigned recruiter. Additionally, want to avoid answering the "why" question as much as possible. I think a phone call makes it more awkward that it needs to be.

For some additional info, it is a huge company (300k+ employees) and my start date is still a few months out. The background/documentation process hasn't even started. All I've done is accept the offer letter letter.

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It's not an either/or. You should send a boiler-plate email for record keeping purposes AND call those who are relevant (recruiter and hiring manager, perhaps) to tell them personally. Probably in reverse order.

Your reputation in this world is too important to not do something like this, which is inherently irritating to the company but ultimately both understandable and forgivable to normal people, with as much grace as possible.

Commercial Real Estate Developer
 

Don't break up over text message and don't renege without a call... yes, this call won't be fun to make, but it's part of growing up.

Be excellent to each other, and party on, dudes.
 

I accepted an offer straight out of undergrad (36,000 employees), only to have an offer 2x better come through a month prior to my starting date. Also like you, I didn't want to call and instead opted to send an email. I haven't heard anything from the firm ever since. I sincerely doubt that HR lady holds a vendetta to this day and if I were to apply to a role in which I am qualified for today, I doubt my candidacy would be impacted.

Although not as noble & mature, I sent the email, ghosted HR and lived to tell the tale.

 

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