I did notice.
There is 219 replies, but only 70 thumbs up…
PLEASE THUMB UP THIS THREAD!
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I will say, a lot of the same people have replied over and over.
But yes, maybe more Thumbs Up 
is what they need?
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It’s also crazy that you can’t edit a misspelling in email addresses (Which is easy to do!) because that “email address is taken”…
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I haven’t started loyalty programs yet but my customers are already a mess. One issue I have is a customer who buys gifts for many different addresses. I have her customer name entered like 8 times. Can we get a set up like Amazon where a customer can enter a bunch of different addresses and recipient names under their customer name? Then, when I begin my loyalty program, perhaps the points will be attributable to the correct customer.
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Just give up on the loyalty points. Unless shopify can implement merging customers you will find yourself in an endless quest to find customers points and allow them to use em. Then when you cancel the points feature, you will be left with pissed off customers.
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@Kevin_Hartman I wouldn’t dare even try to set up loyalty through this mess!
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I was just told by customer support:
"We understand that this is a major frustration with our customers. It is being looked at. I just do not have information on the project.
It is being looked at on a serious level."
So if we all just keep hitting up the customer support, then perhaps they will actually hear us.
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That’s great to hear! I want to get as many people bugging them about this as possible, lol.
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By “being looked at”.
They mean every time it pops up here.
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I actually have it on a pretty good source within Shopify that it is truly being looked at now. It’s reached the product team’s desk in some capacity, but doesn’t mean any plans are made yet and it will still take a while to change it.
Ok. I know this has been an ongoing topic of mind boggling frustration for all of us that depend on Shopify. I continue to ask myself WHY is merging customers such a difficult problem to solve? What is the sticky point???
Does anybody else but me wonder…
WHAT THE HECK ARE THEY WORKING ON???
Sheesh 
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Being looked at. LOL. One of the co-founders of Shopify is on our board of directors (no longer involved). We escalated this issue two years ago and they have done nothing about it. We sat down for 45 minutes with their dev team to clearly articulate the issue, the result was, nothing was done about it. Even the co-founder of Shopify agreed it was a problem that needed to be addressed.
I don’t think the current Shopify team takes customers’ concerns seriously. This has clearly been a problem for a long time that not only hurts conversions but costs Shopify customers a lot of money due to duplicate accounts being synced with email and support systems that charge based on the number of marketing contacts.
Being “LOOKED AT” probably means that someone is reading through the posts.
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I’ll believe it when I see it.
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This has been a problem in Shopify forums since 2016 without any solution, I am wondering if there are any efforts being made at all to resolve this? It looks like over 20,000 users have the same concern, is there any explanation on progress or reason why there is no solution after 7 years?
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My understanding of the situation is that merging customers is an architectural problem. Because merging customers was not built into the the original structure, adding it now would require dismantling and rebuilding the entire program: as if you built a house then 10 years later you decide to add a pool on the roof. It would have been doable had it been considered at the beginning, but going back to do the retrofit requires altering nearly everything right down to the foundation, and not just the support system, it would include plumbing, electrical wiring, and who knows what else.
The only way to “fix” this is to abandon any idea of merging duplicate accounts, or going to a different platform. It’s a dead issue for Shopify.
Hi Jansen,
It is not an architectural problem but a process flaw. It actually has nothing to do with merging customers but rather how customer accounts are handled. See my original thread:
Here is a summary of the issue. The thread is about merging customer data but the root cause is how accounts are handled in Shopify which is what is causing the account duplicates.
This issue is caused by a process flaw/bug in Shopify. What I mean by that is that the issue is the result of the “optional account” setting. The recommendation is to disable that feature but we have done a lot of testing and mandatory accounts result in a significant downturn in conversions.
The issue is that even though Shopify says “optional accounts” this is not in fact true. The account is created by its just not active (no password). What happens is the customer gets an email to activate their account (one email from Shopify). We additionally send 3 others but the reality is that customers do not hit the activate button which results in a fatal flaw. The next time the customer attempts to log in using their email, the system tells them they do not have an account. When they attempt a password reset, they are told they do not have an account. When they try and set up a new account and use the same email address, the system tells them the account exists (yet that cannot access it). So, naturally, the customer either leaves and orders on another channel or uses another email address. We have over 3600 customers with multiple duplicate accounts because of this issue. If Shopify can fix this one issue, the duplicate accounts would be a moot point. The account should be automatically enabled with a random strong password. If the customer never wants to log in again then it doesn’t matter. If they do, they simply just need to request a password change. This is a process flaw because it results in cart abandonment (untraceable on the Shopify customer side because the customer cannot log in) but in reality, we performed AB testing and baseline with “accounts mandatory”. When then turned back on accounts optional and the impact was obvious.
The issue can easily be fixed by eliminating the activation emails and just assigning a random strong password to all accounts and that way if someone attempts a password reset, it works and they do not go down the path of uncertainty.
On our side over 30% of our customers have left Shopify to purchase our products on an alternate platform, ie. Amazon. We also have well over 4000 duplicate users, some of which have 3-4 accounts each.
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Yep.
Dealt with 2 this week.
Cant log in because… there is no account with that email.
Cant reset passwords becasue… there is not an account with that email
Yet…
Cant create an account because… There is ALREADY an account with that email
WTF…
End result = Customer orders elsewhere.
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@AlexanderKunz , your story explains why there are so many people that make orders with multiple email addresses. It makes it very very difficult to get a repeat order from somebody that has already placed an order on an optional account. It’s just terrible.
But for me, it does not explain why they can’t allow for a merge feature.
To me, it sounds like an architectural problem. The same architectural problem that forces them to have the weird account flow you described.
I suspect they made a choice that did not scale well. And unraveling that mess might topple the whole house of cards.
And it must be major. I mean, they hired 2021 new people in 2021. They were able to completely revamp the way stores are built with their Storefront 2.0, but yet this issue, which is directly costing their customer revenue, they cannot (will not?) solve?
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More like basement and the pool needs to be able to either lift all they way to the roof or the front or backyard, and all the stuff like bedrooms, bathrooms, wiring need to completely phase through reality while this happens. And the pool needs to be usable as skateboard park or a court for tennis or basketball. And it should do all this silently with no maintenance needed ever.
It’s software, it can be fixed. No need to tear down the whole system, they can fix it, they know they can fix it, they just have not yet, and refuse to explain why.