Hey everyone! 
I’m running into this really weird issue with HubSpot’s API and I’m hoping someone here has seen this before or can help me understand what’s going on.
## The Situation
I’m trying to use HubSpot’s v1 createOrUpdate API to update an existing contact, but instead of updating it, I’m getting a 409 “Contact already exists” error. This is confusing because… well, that’s exactly what createOrUpdate is supposed to handle, right?
Here’s what I’m doing:
```bash
curl --request POST \
--url https://api.hubapi.com/contacts/v1/contact/createOrUpdate/email/john.doe@example.com \
--header ‘Authorization: Bearer HUBSPOT_API_TOKEN’ \
--header ‘Content-Type: application/json’ \
--data ‘{
“properties”: [
{“property”: “email”, “value”: “john.doe@example.com”},
{“property”: “firstname”, “value”: “John”},
{“property”: “lastname”, “value”: “Doe”},
{“property”: “phone”, “value”: “+1234567890”},
{“property”: “city”, “value”: “New York”},
{“property”: “country”, “value”: “United States”}
]
}’
```
## The Error Response
And here’s what I’m getting back:
```json
{
“message”: “Contact already exists. Existing ID: 123456789”,
“identityProfile”: {
“vid”: 123456789,
“identity”: [
{
“value”: “a1b2c3d4-e5f6-7890-abcd-ef1234567890”,
“type”: “LEAD_GUID”,
“timestamp”: 1759929705399
},
{
“value”: “john.doe@example.com”,
“type”: “EMAIL”,
“timestamp”: 1759930250066,
“isPrimary”: true
},
{
“value”: “j.doe@company.com”,
“type”: “EMAIL”,
“timestamp”: 1759930225502,
“isSecondary”: true
}
],
“linkedVid”: [52408801, 68726151],
“isContact”: true,
“isCanonicalProfile”: true,
“savedAtTimestamp”: 1759930250186,
“mergeInputs”: []
},
“errors”: [
{
“message”: “A contact with email john.doe@example.com already exists. Existing ID: 123456789”,
“in”: “email”
}
],
“status”: “error”,
“correlationId”: “5d9c44a7-6f95-48b2-90aa-03a1f8a201d4”,
“category”: “OBJECT_ALREADY_EXISTS”,
“error”: “CONTACT_EXISTS”
}
```
## What I’ve Tried
I’ve checked and there’s definitely no other account with the original email address - the contact I’m trying to update is unique.
The only workaround I’ve found so far is:
1. Change the email in the HubSpot UI (add an underscore or something)
2. Then make the request with the correct data using the changed email as the URL parameter
But this is obviously not a sustainable solution! 
## My Questions
1. **Has anyone else seen this behavior?** Is this a known issue with the createOrUpdate API?
2. **Am I missing something obvious?** Maybe there’s a different approach I should be using?
3. **Is there a better way to handle this?** The workaround I found is pretty clunky.
## What I’m Hoping For
Ideally, I’d like to be able to just call the createOrUpdate API and have it work as expected - either create the contact if it doesn’t exist, or update it if it does. That’s the whole point of the API, right?