Need Help. Weirdest Stuff Happening

I have a friend who has a 9700. I have a 9000. We are both on AT&T. We have commnuicated back and forth forever via sms, bbm, pin, etc. All of a sudden today when they send me sms texts, the texts have come in duplicates, back to back two copies everytime. When I send a text they can see it there until they try to open it and it goes away. It's not happening with texts from other people. I saw this with my own eyes. When they tried to delete my texts their phone literally looked like it was shutting down. We switched over to BBM and and now the messages they are receiving are not in order of how they were sent.

Has anybody been experiencing this with their 9700??? Does anybody know what may be causing the issue? Could it be AT&T? Could it be a RIM thing?

Either way they are real frustrated and now I'm frustrated because I convinced them to switch from the jesus phone to BlackBerry. Any help would be appreciated.