[ryandrake]

To an end customer, it doesn't matter if a problem is under the merchant's direct control or if it's happening upstream. He is the merchant's customer, the UX he sees is how the merchant is choosing to represent itself to their customers, and therefore the merchant, and only the merchant is accountable if that experience is crappy.

Whether OP actually worked in e-commerce is kind of irrelevant. I've never worked in e-commerce either, and if CompanyX fails to process my payment and I can't buy something from them, I'm going to rightfully blame CompanyX for that, not one of their service vendors.