FWIW, I do something similar to Tom for storing order information although I only store successful orders, unsuccessful orders generate an email to the site owner like ... 
Mine (generated by eCart) also does not store unsuccessful orders. I would REALLY be interested in see how you capture and email the unsuccessful orders - that would be really helpful to me.
What I am puzzled about is what you need the form elements for ? The normal flow is that on the confirm page where the authorize.net code is you would normally have something like this at the bottom of the authorize.net code block:$WAGatewayResponse =
...this automatically transfers and payment failure to the checkout_failure.php page and then by including the include and code I mentioned previously you would automatically get the error message displayed.
YES you are right. I don't know what on earth I was doing wrong but I eventually figured this out. For anyone else as dumb as me I've attached a copy of the working pages.
Let me explain why I was so confused:
In DreamWeaver, while looking at confirm.php, in the Bindings panel there is a whole section of bindings (is that the right way to say that?) that's labeled: "Local Checkout Response (Authorise Net)". In there I can see elements just like in a recordset, session or eCart binding. So I can drag them onto the page. However, if they're used in the confirm.php they're apparently useless, because they don't have any value until AFTER confirm.php is posted (at least, that's the why I understand it).
Now, if I open checkout_failure.php, which I where I /really/ need to use those functions, they are NOT in the Bindings panel. This gave me the initial impression that I had to "get, store and pass them" in confirm.php and then display the value on checkout_failure.php. The only way I could think to pass them from confirm.php to checkout_failure.php was via form post - thus the "need" for the form elements.
Dear WebAssist: This is some sort of bug. The "Local Checkout Response (Authorise Net)" needs to show up in the bindings panel on the checkout_failure.php page.
To add more confusion, when I first posted here, I /did/ have the WA_eCart/Adv_CO_Scripts/AuthNet_PHP.php at the top of checkout_failure.php, and somehow it got removed (yeah I'm sure I did it, I just don't remember doing it). And I was /not/ getting the typical "no such file at line 66..." type warning. So eventually I had the right code function in these (as you suggested) but the function couldn't run cause of the missing include. I finally double checked and found it missing :-( but it works now that I put it back. :-)
In the attached zip file, I also put a screen shot of the bindings panel as seen from confirm.php. The entry that's expanded is the one I'm talking about, that's NOT shown while editing checkout_success.php
THANK YOU for all the help.
