This makes sense. They never got into the forum, neither created an account, they just sent an e-mail for you and Discourse created an staged account to own this e-mail.
When they finally visit your forum, and create an account they will be staged no more, and will work like normal users.
Ok something is really wrong with this userās account
Its set to staged as Y
And they canāt even login. When we try and request a password reset its says there is no account with that username or email address, yet they show up as a user with the proper email address.
Any ideas?
Joe
More details.
The user is sent emails when someone posts a new topic (as they should) and more importantly no password reset email is sent when they request it.
You can edit your previous reply and add details. There is really no need to add another reply. 
He needs to create a new account I think, using the same email he used to get staged.
Ok that seemed to work. But I have no idea what this Staged thing meansā¦ even the documentation its for āA special placeholder account which is created automatically by the system for email integrationā