Maybe that sort of contrition works in relationship arguments or parole hearings, but I hardly find it appropriate here.<p>"At around 07:00 BST on Friday morning, our transaction database began to malfunction. Naturally, we followed procedure and switched to a backup server. Unfortunately, the backup server began to drastically slow down and was struggling to process live transactions."<p>That is very vague and sounds like a euphemism for "we don't know who changed the config file but it broke production and so we had somebody spin up a new instance on their laptop".<p>I any case I was in a foreign country when my card (and those of my travelling companions) stopped working without warning or explanation. I don't want him to be sorry, I want a rationale for why I shouldn't switch to an equivalent competitor like Monzo (on the assumption they have better reliability).