Shopify Customer Account Issue - Users who sign up get 'email already in use' message if account is not enabled

Question

We recently made some changes to the site, that forces customers to create an account before they can purchase a product (we sell digital downloads and now rely on the account area for customers to access their downloads.)

The problem is, is that we have around 3500 customers who have previously purchased a product from us, but weren't forced to create an account, and didn't opt in at the time. Now when they go to set up an account, they get a message saying their email is already in use, because Shopify can see the email on their system from the previous purchase, even though the account is disabled. They then usually try and put in log in details or reset their password but get an error saying no account found.

Is there

a) a way to allow customers to sign up or 'enable' an account on our website b) batch send an account invite to all customers who have accounts disabled, maybe by creating a customer group? I really don't want to have to do this manually!!!

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

It is a very small, simple script to iterate through all your customer's and find all the ones set to "disabled" and then send them the activation email so they can just set a password and go to town and buy stuff.

Using the API, and Ruby, I am pretty confident I could do it with around 6 easy to read lines of code. Go for it!