Payment issues with authorize.net - seen before with other modules

I just entered an order on our site via the authorize.net payment module- everything looked absolutely normal, order processed and completed normally.
Credit card authorization info was not in the order confirmation, I received NO confirmation email from authorize.net. Transaction was never processed from authorize.net
I've reported this issue with my two former CC processors in the thread below.
http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=130266

Since this problem was reported, I've switched processors AGAIN. I've upgraded the cart. I've switched hosting companies.

Don't know WHAT the issue is, but i cannot believe I'm the only zen cart user that's ever seen this issue, but that I've seen it with 3 hosting companies and 3 credit card companies.

Seems to me that the payment processing within the cart may be setting something to "successful" status before the successful return from authorize.net - is there somewhere I should be looking to find this?

This happens about once every 30 transactions or so - but sometimes as often as 2 of 3.
Please help - it's really getting to me to have to call the client and ask for a CC number.

Thanks!!!

Running 1.3.9a.

Which authorize.net module?

When you say "order processed and completed normally", that suggests to me that you can see the order in Admin->Customers->Orders, right?
If so, then on that screen with all the orders listed, the 2nd column shows the payment module and shipping module used on that order. What's listed there for this order that allegedly wasn't processed by authorize.net?

I happened to enter these two orders myself from phone orders - both today, after converting over to the authorize.net module yesterday.

pic of the one that processed ok is at
www. shirts 4 bowling .com/images/samples/orders.jpg

the one that failed is at
www . shirts 4 bowling .com/images/samples/ccfail-1.jpg

Notice the difference in the status boxes.

the pic of the authorize .net batch is at
www. shirts 4 bowling . com /images/samples/authorize.jpg

This happened with 1.3.8 as well. It happened with the payjunction module and BOTH the sage payment module and net1 module. These were on other hosting account - so I tried my best to blame them.

The store is now on my new hosting company - I've had the problem on THIS hosting with the sage payment module, so I was blaming them. The cart no longer has anything in common with the old conditions - so I have to believe it's some sort of problem with ZC.

Thanks!

There are three Authorize.net modules. You've still not said which one you're using.
In fact, you didn't answer any of my questions at all.

Despite the typo in your screenshot image filenames, your screenshots show the first order as containing CC details, and the second one does not. This suggests that somehow that information is getting removed, perhaps by being passed back and forth between systems, or due to addons that are causing conflicts, or customer browsers that are misbehaving, or something quirky on your server.

Having tried numerous different ways to replicate your scenario with a clean uncustomized install of the latest version of Zen Cart, I cannot trigger the symptoms no matter what I try.

Which authorize.net module?
authorizenet_aim

When you say "order processed and completed normally", that suggests to me that you can see the order in Admin->Customers->Orders, right?
YES.

If so, then on that screen with all the orders listed, the 2nd column shows the payment module and shipping module used on that order. What's listed there for this order that allegedly wasn't processed by authorize.net?

authorizenet_aim was listed for both.

Any help or direction you might be able to supply would be greatly appreciated. In fact - if you could point me to documentation that might help me figure the order in which things happen when "confirm the order" is pushed, I can likely track down the initialization issue that I "think" is occurring.
Thanks again for your help and support.

Simple:

The checkout_payment screen collects the card details from the customer.
Then when the customer clicks Confirm on the checkout_confirmation screen, Zen Cart uses CURL to talk to the Authorize.net site and submit the card details and get a response back. Once that response is received, the customer is moved on to the checkout_process screen which is where the order is saved and emails sent and then the customer is forwarded to the checkout_success screen.
If you have debug-logging enabled in the AIM module, the AIM data being submitted to authnet is logged into a file in the /cache/ folder when the confirmation button is pressed, and updated when the response comes back from authorize.net, showing the returned details of the transaction.

The symptoms you're describing of some orders being submitted to the gateway and others not, but still being saved within your store as though they were processed by the gateway ... makes no sense, unless you've got highly customized code doing funky things completely different than how the code is designed to work.