Wow! very informative post. I’m glad that I found another way for this issue. This is my same problem, in the pat but I found a useful tool called Scrubly Duplicate remover. The process is simple; it scans your Gmail contact folders and look for duplicate contacts. If Scrubly finds any exact or Compatible Contacts, it will remove or merge them automatically. They even have a back up so I can have the original copy just in case. Hope this also helps. Thanks again for post.

Chris Smith