Thank you for the clarification, and apologies for any inaccurate implications. As others point out, I'm willing to give a bit of benefit of the doubt if only because there are parts of the system (Comcast's business connection takes a dump, for example) that even the payment network doesn't have control over.

Though your post makes me wonder: do payment providers have SLAs, or do they just say, "you're locked in with our network and hardware, suck it up"?