Charge declined, but $response->error_message returns false

jwcarlton — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 00:18:15 GMT

I'm running my own PHP script to process transactions. The relevant section looks like this:

$fields = array(
'first_name' => $cardholder_first,
'last_name' => $cardholder_last,
'company' => $company,
'address' => $street1,
'city' => $city,
'state' => $state,
'zip' => $zip,
'country' => "US",

'phone' => $tele,
'email' => $email,

'description' => "Advertisement on $site",
'amount' => $value,

'card_num' => $ccn_dec,
'exp_date' => sprintf('%02d%02d', $expire_month, ($expire_year % 1000)),
'card_code' => $cvc2
);

$transaction->setFields($fields);
$response = $transaction->authorizeOnly();

if ($response->approved) $this_response = $response->transaction_id;
else $this_response = $response->error_message;

// for testing

echo $this_response;

If the transaction is approved, I'm getting a transaction ID as expected, But I had one to decline today, and it just returned empty; either "false" or "", I'm not sure which.

When I logged in to Auth.net, it listed the following errors:

Declined (Card declined by issuer - Contact card issuer to determine reason.)

Address Verification Status: No match on Street and Zip (N)

The question now is, why didn't $this_response equal one of those two errors? I'm pretty sure that this USED to work, but now I'm questioning whether it's always had a problem, and I've just now discovered it. If so, then I'm sure I've had a lot of customers that were declined but didn't get the error message, so they just thought that I had ignored them.

TIA.

Re: Charge declined, but $response->error_message returns false

RaynorC1emen7 — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 00:35:18 GMT

anet_php_sdk-1.1.8.zip\anet_php_sdk\lib\AuthorizeNetAIM.php

doesn't look like error_message is set for decline

topic Re: Charge declined, but $response->error_message returns false in Integration and Testing

Charge declined, but $response->error_message returns false

Re: Charge declined, but $response->error_message returns false