Question: Contacts Unexpectedly Merging

[MRada]

This issue has happened a couple different times since February 2023. We have an existing contact, but someone else will fill out a form and for some reason Hubspot attaches the new contact information and form entries to the existing contact, overriding their information with the data from the form. 

For example, say we have David B. as a lead. Then, a form is submitted in David's history that has a new email, name, and completely different information (someone else is completing the form). Instead of creating a new contact, David become John, and thus we lose trace of David unless we catch this error. 

Has anyone else experienced this or found a reason for it? I thought maybe if the user forwarded one of their marketing emails then Hubspot might track it as their activity, but shouldn't a new contact be created if the email is different?

[AHöhmann]

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 :). 

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @MRada,

This is caused by the form settings, specifically "Always create contact for new email address" not being enabled, see here: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/forms/create-forms#customize-your-form-options

When this is not enabled, HubSpot will by default attempt to associate certain activity with existing records. This can cause mix-ups when marketing emails are forwarded (as tracking links are uniquely meant just for the recipients) or when multiple users share the same computer or when one person submits a form for coworkers.

In other words: HubSpot is trying to associate certain things for you, trying to do good. However, when of the things above apply, things get messy.

The only way to prevent this is to enable the form setting mentioned above. (Yes, you would have to do this manually for all forms, there is no bulk setting.)

In terms of cleaning up: You'll unfortunately have to unmerge them manually, creating another contact record and cleaning up each field on the record.

Let me know if you have any follow-up questions!