Doctrine Repository getEntityManager() does returns empty

I have an application I am coding with Symfony2. I have created an Account entity and used the annotation to create a repository called AccountRepository Inside the AccountRepository object I have created a function to run some business logic that goes out to an outside vendor and creates a user at their site, and returns the information back to us so I can associate their user with our Account Entity. Part of creating that user includes sending over credit card token. They then return some limited credit card data I want to store and associate with our account so I have an entity AccountCard after creating the object and inserting the appropriate data, I am unable to request the entity manager from the repository and persist the AccountCard doing a print_r on the $em variable shows nothing, yet everything I've read tells me I should be able to do this. What am I doing wrong? ``` <?php namespace Openbridge\CommonBundle\Entity\Repository; use Doctrine\ORM\EntityRepository; use Openbridge\CommonBundle\Entity\Account as Account; use Openbridge\CommonBundle\Entity\AccountCard as AccountCard; use Openbridge\CommonBundle\Entity\AccountAddress as AccountAddress; /** * AccountRepository * * This class was generated by the Doctrine ORM. Add your own custom * repository methods below. */ class AccountRepository extends EntityRepository { public function __construct() { } function createVendorUser(Account $account, $userData = array()) { // Request new user from vendor code here. (this works) $ac = new AccountCard(); // setters for $ac data here. // Get entity manager $em = $this->getEntityManager(); $em->persist($ac); $em->flush(); } ```