When you make a form of some kind, you can set duplicate contact checking settings. You can set it to check based on email, names, etc, or any combination. My specific needs is that duplicate contact checking is made on email only, then all other fields are updated when a duplicate is found.
The problem is that the duplicate checking setting on the shopping cart cannot be changed:
Unlike the other forms, an order’s duplicate checker settings cannot be edited - they are preset to check by First Name, Last Name, and Email Address.
https://help.infusionsoft.com/help/when-does-the-system-automatically-merge-contacts
What?! This creates a lack of consistent behavior in the software. If I want email only duplicate checking, then I’m going to end up with duplicates when people order in the shopping cart, but happen to use a different name. A customer named Michael may feel like entering Mike this time, for example, and they have no expectation that this will make their experience with my company more difficult.
If you have an urgent need for contact duplicates to be merged, say, a membership site based on email address, then your customers will inadvertently create duplicate contact ids, all with the same email address. This is pretty crazy, because now when they log in to your site, let’s say right after buying an add-on to their membership, it might show only their old membership status, or only just the add-on, or nothing at all, because the membership site doesn’t expect a database with duplicates. Now I’ll get emails from upset customers because of something that should be automated in the first place. Their order should have been duplicate checked against my settings, not an unchangeable default.
I’m posting this to bring attention to what looks like an oversight. Consistency in duplicate checking is expected, not merely preferred. I ask the IS dev team to please fix this soon.