PUT API not creating new customer

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1

We have been running into issues with our website trying to generate a new customer if the name already exists. Currently, we have a script running that gets customer information from Cetec to see if the person placing an order through our website is the same person who already exists in our system. We verify name, email, and phone number. If the order coming in is a new customer, we then PUT all of the new information, but Cetec is not creating a new customer. It is simply adding the new address to an existing person because it’s the same name.
Is there some additional data we can include in the PUT script to tell Cetec that this needs to be a new customer and get a new customer ID?

2

Hi Jared,

The customer names must be unique. When a new customer is added with the same name, the api will first search existing customers by that name. If it find’s one, it will update that customer record instead of creating a new one. Can you give me more info on your use case for wanting multiple customers with the same name?

Thanks!

3

Okay… Let’s say we have a customer named John Smith in our system located in Delaware.
Tonight, another fella named john smith places an order who lives in Texas
Next month, another John Smith places an order but he lives in Australia.
All of these orders get placed through our website, so now we have one customer named John Smith, but he’s got 3 different addresses and one email address. Yet, all of them are actually 3 different people.

4

Hi Jared,

Thanks for the additional info. Typically the customer record is an organization or entity, and then individuals are added as customer contacts. It sounds like you are describing customer contacts. Have a look at the api documentation for customer contacts, /apioverview/contacts.
It will require some additional steps. e.g., create a customer then associate the new customer contact with them.

Hopefully that helps!

5

We do mostly retail sales, so our customer names are people not so much businesses. I guess we’ll have to start adding numeric values to customers with the same name or something.