Discount Code - Same Customer Multiple Email Addresses

[Small-Forge]

I use a Discount Code that applies as "One Per Customer" for any purchase greater than $70. A clever customer has worked out that if they change their email address and no other details they can keep re-using the discount code. Is there anyway to add a second validation check like Customer Name or Customer Address? Thanks

Adrian

Small Forge

[Imogen]

Hi there, @Small-Forge. 

Thanks for bringing this situation to the Shopify Community! It's certainly a unique situation and I'm more than happy to try and assist you here. 

I did some digging and some additional research into this topic, as I wanted to make sure I could share with you the most relevant information. At this time, there is no additional verification check that can be added to the discounts to prevent someone from using multiple emails to get a discount multiple times. The expectation that a customer is only using the discount once, and it being tracked by email, was built to avoid situations like this, but there are always folks that are going to find a way to exploit it. 

One way you can prevent this from happening is requiring customer accounts on your store. This forces a customer to login every time they want to purchase form your website, and they'd need to use an email address. This would allow you to make it more difficult for this person to exploit the multiple discounts, as they'd have to make multiple customer accounts. If they did this, you'd be able to track shipping locations, identify the same addresses, and cancel orders and refund them to this customer, and let them know that they cannot use any more discounts for their purchases. Of course, you can do the cancel order/customer follow up method without making customer accounts required, as well. 

This situation has been brought up several times by other sellers in the past, so I was able to find a few potential work arounds beyond what I mentioned above. Some sellers have found success in preventing this by using a third party discount app to generate bulk single use discount codes. Then, you'd use a third party email marketing app to send these single use codes out to new subscribers. The mailing app would have to integrate with the coupon list, but this would remedy this issue. 

Another workaround is to use something like Fraud Filter to prevent this specific customer from placing orders on your store and using that coupon repeatedly. If they're the only person seemingly doing this, using the fraud filter app to restrict their ability to shop your store would prevent it from happening. 

Lastly, you can always try to contact this customer via their email address and let them know you've noticed that the shipping address they used has been used on multiple orders  taking advantage of the discount in the past, and that you'd like them to stop using the code or you will prevent them from having their orders shipped to them. Often times, just signalling to the offender that you're aware of things is enough to stop the behavior. 

I've gone ahead and wrote to our product development team about this situation on your behalf, Small-Forge. I've provided them with the context here so that way, they can understand how the need for an additional verification check is critical. Though I cannot comment on when we may see such a thing implemented, I can assure you that I'll make the appropriate people aware of this desired function. 

If you have any additional questions for me, please just reply to this thread and let me know! 

[Small-Forge]

Hi Imogen,

Thanks for the great feedback. Hopefully an optional 2nd verification method can be included in the Shopify programming. At this stage I’d rather not restrict this customer as to his credit he is still making purchases and if he feels he is getting a win, I am still benefitting from the purchases that he is making.

This was the first person to have cleverly worked out how to get around the Discount Code so it may just be a one-off. If he continues to do it a diplomatic email to him maybe the best course of action and it highlights to me that I need to get a Loyalty Program running so that the benefit is to register an account and enjoy discounts in a different method that is under some control by Small Forge.

Regards,
Adrian
Small Forge

[Imogen]

Thanks for the reply, @Small-Forge aka Adrian! 

I can totally see the value a second verification check would bring to the table. I processed a submission for the feature yesterday after my original reply so there's hope for something like that to come down the product pipline in the future! Also makes a lot of sense to not want to restrict this customers. As you said, it's a 'positive' relationship between business and customer in a way since you're both benefiting from the transactions! If things do escalate, then a diplomatic email is certainly the route I would go, too. 

The reward program to incentivize single customer accounts is honestly a great idea! I was chatting with someone yesterday about this actually. There's a fantastic application called Smile that you can use to help build a rewards program for your shoppers. We also have a great Shopify made blog here that covers this topic in detail, too! You can access it here: https://bit.ly/3Gl3ear. 

Hopefully you find this additional information helpful! If you need anything else, just reply and let me know! 

[sherman123]

I am having this issue as well. I wish there was a way to block the discount from working when the same address is used at checkout that has already been used on previous orders. I have a customer that has changed emails 3 times and last name twice to get coupon code.

[Imogen]

Hi there, @sherman123. Thanks for jumping in on the thread here.

Sorry to hear that you've got such clever customers! There's always one bad apple in the bunch that tries to game the system to take advantage of businesses. I did some digging into this now that a few months have passed, and I have a suggestion that you can try: making phone numbers required for your orders. 

The reason why you'd want to enable this setting is because the system will check to see if the number has been used with that code before, and will prevent it's use for a 2nd time if so. Customers have less phone numbers than they do emails (unless we have an expert couponer here), so this should prevent these repeat customers from getting through. Of course, they can keep trying and trying if they like, but at that point, you know they're simply acting with ill-intent, and you can assess how you'd like to address that customer's interactions with your business. 

To set up required phone numbers, follow these steps:

• Login to your Admin
• Go to 'Settings'
• Go to 'Checkout and Acounts'
• Scroll until you find the 'Customer Information' Section
• Find 'Shipping Address Phonenumber' and set it to 'Required'

I have a screenshot here for assistance

This method should solve your issue, but you also have the option of the third party app route, like I had mentioned in my above replies. I've also gone ahead and passed this thread to our Product Team, so they can see that folks are looking for an easier solution to prevent this from happening.

I'd love to hear more about your business! You must be selling something fairly cool for a customer to go so far out of their way to get your products multiple times. I operate a small art business with my partner, so we always like to chat with other merchants and hear their stories!

[Joris_]

Hi Imogen,

Making phone numbers required doesn't seem to help. Phone numbers have always been required on our store and customers can still use the same discount code with another email but the same phone number. You'll also understand that using unique discount codes is a workaround, but one that creates more friction. You need to convert customers when they are ready. You don't want them to go looking for an email and come back to your website. Additional checkboxes in the discount creation process as mentioned above (use the discount only one time per phone number, one time per address) seem the best solution.

[Imogen]

Hey again, @Joris_, and welcome to the thread @sweetmaker. Thanks for following up!

Apologies that the phone number method doesn't seem to do the trick here. The phone number method words for those folks that are using the same discount codes while checking out using different methods (think POS vs. Online) so it solves some use cases here but it doesn't address the central issue - folks that are double-dipping with the same shipping address but different emails. 

Doing some more digging, it looks like the 'one per customer' limitation checks only for the email being used currently, and not for other identifiers. I agree with the sentiment in the thread here that checking for additional identifiers (like address, being the clearest example) would make a lot of sense to prevent those double-dippers from having their way with our discounts so easily.

I followed up with my feedback submission and I can report that the team does have eyes on the request. I can't comment on a timeline for when more identifiers may be added to this limitation, but it's on the radar. For good measure, I'm going to take some time to submit a 2nd request - just because something like this makes a lot of sense to have natively offered within the platform.

I do have to mention that I've outlined several other potential workarounds above, but there are pros and cons to all of the methods outlined above, though a 3rd party app or emailed code would solve the main pain-point. The point of Shopify is to make ecommerce great for everyone, so the easier we can make things, and the smarter we can make our systems, the closer we get to reaching that goal.

I'll continue to keep an eye on this thread for any updates from you folks, and I'll throw up a reply here once there's new information to share about the request. Thanks for the continued passion with getting this remedied. 

[Joris_]

This must be a problem for every store that has a welcome discount for 1st time customers. Some will come back time after time with new email addresses. It would be a shame if we would have to add and extra app for a function to work properly. "Limit to one use per customer" could have some check boxes that allows to narrow it down. ☑️ 1 time per address, ☑️ 1 time per email.  Could you please talk with the developers again?

[Imogen]

Hi there, @Joris_. Thanks for jumping in on the thread here.

There's a case to be made about customers taking advantage of discounts via this method. Most customers won't go through the trouble of making new email accounts, but some do, and they will continue doing so if they see value there. For many businesses, this continued business can be seen as a good thing - as the discount they're receiving likely won't wipe away all of the profit from the order - but it can be annoying nonetheless.

As mentioned above, I've gone ahead and flagged this thread with the Product Team, so they can be made aware of the feedback being received here. I can't comment on a timeline for when new restrictions made be added to one-time use discount codes, but the team is aware of the request.

Another suggestion I don't mind floating is moving away from a freely accessible discount code, to a one-time use code that can be delivered post-purchase via a 'thank you' email. You can advertise this discount code on your site (as you likely would do for your welcome discount), and customers would only have access to the code after making a full-price purchase. This allows you to collect email/phone number/customer info from the merchant, and introduces a full-price paywall before the customer can think about creating new accounts. Something to consider, for sure!

[fruitezy]

Yes exactly our issue aswell

[sweetmaker]

I'm having a similar issue now. And it's more than just one person. It's a decent amount of people that have figured out the trick of using a different email. 
Please tell me this feature is close to launching because it's a major issues, especially for small businesses. We need to be allowed to have this option. And setting a phone number may not necessarily work as well as people may not have a phone. The feature really needs to be tied to the billing address. 

[MartinsKalnins]

Hello,

In order to reduce the risk of your discount codes being exploited in the wrong way, you can always ask for customer ID or address verification, especially, for large orders. I invite you to try our app that we've recently launched https://apps.shopify.com/fraud-judge

On top of the 3months free trial we now have lifetime discounts available to the subscription plans. In return - if you like our service, we would appreciate it if you left a review on the App Store.

Here's your 25% lifetime discount code: XKAGS7

Best Regards,

Martins

[Imogen]

Thank you @MartinsKalnins, for your application offer!

It is true that there are likely third party app options that can be considered to help address this verification issue. You can certainly take a look at Martins' suggestion here and see if it could be helpful! Alongside Martins' application, you may find other solutions within our app store that you can access at the following link: https://bit.ly/3FH2k6K

All the best! Let me know if you have any additional questions! 

[Joris_]

I am sorry, but we shouldn't need third-party apps for basic functionality or improvements.

[JaseJones]

Jumping into this thread in the hope to 'up vote' the feature request. This should very much be a native function with Shopify. 

[Imogen]

Hey there, @JaseJones. Thanks for jumping in here.

I've made sure that our Team is aware of the thread and the feedback here. Just send them another feedback report today. Thanks again for jumping in here, and your passion around this feature request.

[fruitezy]

This is a huge problem for us and the discounts function really needs more flexibility with this type of thing

[petgrocer]

Please bring this up with the devs again. I see they changed the fonts, and reduce the cart size on the POS and rounded the corners on boxes, and hid search options behind a click. Those all took coding time. How about some coding time to fix the issues your users are asking for help with? I haven't seen a thread yet that asked to code rounded corners on the boxes on the website. We still have bugs like the jumping cursor that have been going on for months. Help! Your users are begging for assistance. Please ask them to code in a check against shipping address for this problem.

[Imogen]

Hi there, @petgrocer. Thank you for taking the time to follow up on this thread here. We appreciate your passion around this topic!

I'm happy to go ahead and pass along your feedback regarding this issue to our developers once more! We're always wanting to build Shopify into being the best version of itself, and part of that involves collecting feedback like this. I can't speak to the prioritization of the work our developers do (I'm a Support guy - so I don't have much insight into the development world) but we do have a very streamlined process to pass feedback along internally.

I've gone ahead and completed a feedback report on your behalf, and linked this thread to the developers once more. I can't promise what the outcome of these actions will be, but you can rest assured that it will be seen by the folks that need to see it!

[Kalen_Jordan]

Here is an automation workflow using our app that can do exactly what you're looking for - it looks up previous orders from the customer using the same discount code by address or by name.

Would be happy to help you get that set up in your store!

[petgrocer]

Is it free? We are not paying for more apps. We are nickle and dimed to death by Shopify's business model of letting apps do what should be basic POS functions and basic online functions. It's a very uncomfortable position to be a retailer with Shopify when they have no motivation to correct their system, and they leave it to app developers. But as a store owner, we can not afford to have an app for every single thing that this system should have had as standard. I haven't found any apps doing things out of the goodness of their hearts - they (you) are here to make money. But I am here to also make money and I can't do that if I pay thousands each month for apps.

[Kalen_Jordan]

Realized I hadn't responded to this earlier - sorry about that. No, this wouldn't be free. I understand the frustration on your part. On the flip side, if app devs had no incentive to build apps, there wouldn't be any.

[Philip-Diem]

Did this product request ever get resolved and implemented by Shopify?

does it work for people using the +symbol trick on gmail?

[Blair]

Hi @Philip-Diem,

Thank you for following up on this. 

While this feedback has been passed along to our Developers, we wouldn't have an update on it's availability. As Imogen has shared, we're unable to promise what the outcome of this will be. While I can completely understand how that may not be ideal, I'd encourage you to follow our Changelog for updates/changes coming to the platform. 

[Erden]

Hi Shopify Team,

Can we see if there is an effort to solve this problem or is it scheduled on to-do list? This issue is going on for years. Our shop has hundreds of customers using this method. Some customers even mock the store by saying "if you cannot solve this little bug, why would not I keep exploiting it?".

We see hundreds of features added to Shopify every year. Most of them are only used by %5-10 of the stores. THIS is a function that most stores use. Almost all sellers use coupon codes at some point. Don't you think it is time to prioritize it?