anyway to delete duplicate contacts?

Is it everywhere or just on your iPhone?

I found that the duplicates (don't know how it happened either) were just on my phone, not on iCloud.com.

So I turned off contacts on the phone and erased them all. Then I turned it back on and that fixed it.

See if that's your situation too.

 

I've had this problem too. Seems like everything doesnt work as seamlessly as it should. Deleting them didnt work good for me because i found that sometimes they werent exactly duplicates. Sometimes one would have the persons personal email and the other the same persons work email. I found a pretty good trick though that works for me.

Go into "Contacts"
Select contact with a duplicate
Hit "Edit"
Go down and select "Linked Cards"
then select the other duplicate contact
now "save"

Now the contacts are merged and only show as one contact in your address book.

 

If your Mac is signed into iCloud (and you have Contacts set to sync), you can go into the Address Book application and use the Card | Look for Duplicates menu bar option.

The only thing I don't like about that is that it tells you the number of duplicates it found, and gives you the option of merging duplicate cards, but it doesn't give you a preview of the data it found.

That being that, the feature has always worked well for me.

 

Use Gmail contacts to manage your contacts and delete duplicate contacts.
It's easy and fast, with one click

 

Settings > iCloud > Turn contacts "off" and then back "on"

This worked for me. Not sure if I got lucky, but you could try it.