Authorize.net and missing order

[chriswm]

I have a client who recently moved their store onto Zen Cart and love it, most of the time.

Every so often, 3 times in January, they get a payment approved email from Authorize.net, but there is no matching order in ZenCart. The person placing the order has a customer id so we know they have created an account with Zen Cart but no order is showing.

Any ideas how a payment can be made without placing an order?

Thank you.

Zen-Cart 1.3.8
Authorize.net-SIM

[DrByte]

Authorize.net-SIM

Since SIM requires that the customer go off to another site to complete payment, and must return to your site with valid credentials to confirm that payment was accepted, if there is any break in the return back to your site (browser problem, internet connection problem, customer closes the browser, hack attempt occurs, etc) then it's possible that the processing will not complete, and thus the order will not be stored.

AIM is more reliable since it does all the payment processing while the customer sits ON YOUR site. Granted, AIM requires that you secure your site with an SSL certificate ... which you should do anyway regardless of which payment module you're using.