Member says their join application is stuck or flagged as a duplicate

Symptom-first guide for when a public /join applicant's household or application-fee invoice never appeared.

The platform screens every /join submission for likely duplicate households before creating a household or invoice. If the applicant's email, verified alternate email, phone, or mailing address matches an existing household (or two or more weaker signals match together), the application is paused for staff review instead of going straight to a waitlist position.

This is expected behavior for a paused application. But there's no automatic notification to the applicant that this happened, so from their side it just looks like nothing occurred.

Suggested wording: "Your application is being reviewed because some of your details matched an existing household in our system. That's a routine check, not a rejection. I'll take a look and follow up shortly."

Ask staff with manager/admin access to check /admin/household-matches — see Reviewing possible duplicate households for how to read and resolve it.

Important: clearing a review as "not a duplicate" only clears that specific matched household. If a later application from the same person trips a different candidate match, it reopens a new pending review. So don't expect one clearance to blanket-approve every future submission for that applicant.

This needs a manual decision by staff. It isn't automatic either way:

• If the applicant already has a household, staff should not rely on the review tool's "linked" option to fix it by itself. Choosing that disposition only records a decision note, it does not merge, link, or invite anyone. Staff need to separately invite the applicant into their existing household, or consolidate a duplicate prospect record, per Household ownership, invitations, and merging duplicate records.

• If it's a separate household (e.g. an adult child forming their own household), staff should clear the review as "not a duplicate" so the application can proceed normally.

Suggested wording: "Let me check with the staff who handle membership on the best way to get you connected to your existing account (or confirm this should be a separate one). I'll follow up once that's sorted."

There's no fixed turnaround time for this review in the product. It's a manual staff step. Let the member know it's being looked at and that you'll follow up; avoid promising a specific timeframe.

Hand off to a manager when:

• You (or the member) aren't sure whether there are two real household records for the same person and which one should be considered current.

• The matched household has financial history (existing membership, invoices, payments, bond) that would need to be reviewed before any merge this is exactly the case the needs financial review disposition exists for, and it isn't something support should resolve directly.

• A single weak duplicate signal (for example, just a matching surname and ZIP with nothing else) never surfaces as a flag at all. It's silently dropped rather than paused for review. If a member reports a mysteriously stuck application and staff see no matching review, this is one possible explanation, though it's not something support can confirm directly.

• No operator-facing dashboard or alert exists for pending reviews. Staff have to check /admin/household-matches manually, so a review can sit unnoticed if no one happens to look.