Far from complete… But it’s a start…
This works fine as long as the entire ecosystem of Shopify is involved. Once you provide any third-party integration into the system - it fails. So if you are using a Rewards Program, Incentive Program, or any other “Discount” App, the system generates an error indicating “(Customer XXXX) has a discount and can’t be merged.” This is directly from Shopify Support representatives, who I pinged about the issue and opened a case for.
It indicates that at the Customer level, a field will not allow the merge. Or it’s just some generic message they put there as a placeholder until they figure out how to correct the issue.
I find this strange because nowhere in the DEV library is there any reference to “Discount” within the Customer Object Fields: https://shopify.dev/docs/api/admin-graphql/2022-10/objects/Customer#fields
This raises the question of why? If the mere interaction with a third-party integration causes an error in the “Customer” and “Discount” Object Fields. Then I hope someone can explain or inform the thread of the specific field causing the error and for the merge process to be hung up. Or why wasn’t this tested more before releasing it to the masses?
As of this writing, nobody from Shopify has been able to explain it to me thoroughly. I am a Plus Customer and have more than an average understanding of the field mappings used by the platform due to our configuration and customizations.
I am also aware that there are workarounds for doing Customer Level Price Discounts using the “Price List” and “Company” functions if you are on Plus: “If you are a plus member, you can achieve this by creating price lists, creating a company profile for that customer and assign the price list to it.”
That quote is from another post here with the topic: “Apply Automatic Discount To Tagged Customers”, where the simple request to use a specific tag on Customers to provide them a Discount: https://community.shopify.com/topic/569161 This thread dates back to 2019, so there has been no change since then.
Again, the issue of Customer Level Discounts is not resolved, and you cannot use Merge on Customers who have ever received a discount outside of the Shopify Core Discount function. It makes me wonder if it would error out on someone who was given a discount using Shopify Discounts instead of Bold, Stamped, etc. My guess is no - it will work fine on Shopify-created discounts… SMH
With Shopify bringing so many of the functions of third-party applications internal instead of external pay-to-use applications, they should be building a better product than these third parties - not an inferior version, IMHO.
UPDATE: According to Shopify, you cannot merge ANY Customers who have EVER received a discount - regardless of how the Discount was created… This is another fine example of Shopify not understanding the Retail Environment and that sometimes Customers do wonky things, which force them to create an additional account.
So as long as your customers have never received any discount on your store - this “merge” will work. If they have ever been given a Coupon Code, Discount Code, etc. - the merge will not work. A waste of time and effort to manage customers without being able to Merge ALL of the information or actively select the fields we wish to merge.