We have also experienced an unexpected contact merge, when we ask for name and email address of existing contacts in a chat. HubSpot rather “wildly” changes names of existing contacts and adds email addresses of one contact to a second one, when names, that are typed into the chat, look only a bit similar. I appreciate HubSpot’s eagerness to avoid duplicates, however in our case it creates more data trouble than it avoids.
It would be great to have the option in account settings to disable the automated merging of contacts in cases of slight similarities of names. If such a button already exists, I’m happy to be updated by the community :).