How can I sync contacts within the Lumia 800? Error message 80072EFD.

[Windows Central Question]

Customer has Lumia800 and wants to upgrade. We cannot transfer "people" contacts to either outlook.com; live.com or even by Bluetooth to the new phone (only texts will transfer). Its as if the contacts are locked within a cloud account that we cant access. I'm thinking there may have been an original live account that the customer has set up by others that no longer appears within the handset and he has no recollection of? The contacts still appear in the handset but we cant get to copy or sync them. Tried everything we can find on various forums to no avail.