Course/space access silently not granted to first-time buyers when customer email verification is enabled (1.6.5-1.7.0)

Hi everyone,

I ran into something after updating to 1.6.6 and wanted to share it, in case others see the same.

A new customer bought a course from me (a product with a FluentCommunity integration feed, course + space). Payment went through, the order was marked completed, and FluentCart created her WordPress account. But she was never enrolled in the course. The order showed a red banner, with the HTML tags visible as plain text:

<strong>Error:</strong> This email address is already registered. Please login or try resetting your password.

In the order activity it looks like this:

• "User created successfully": User account has been created automatically on payment success
• "User creation failed from FluentCommunity Integration": This email address is already registered

From what I can see in the code, the new account isn't linked to the customer record while email verification is required. The FluentCommunity integration then finds no linked user, tries to create a second account with the same email and stops. Confirming the email later links the account, but the enrollment doesn't run again, so I had to add her to the course by hand.

It only happens with first-time buyers. Returning customers with a linked account get their access as usual. With verification switched off in 1.7.0 everything works again, which is how I'm running my store for now. I'd like to switch verification back on, though, because I do think confirmed email addresses matter.

Has anyone else seen this? It would be great if the team could take a look.

Setup: FluentCart + Pro 1.7.0 (first seen on 1.6.6), FluentCommunity + Pro 2.11.0, PayPal.