The proverbial ink has hardly dried on my blog post titled Mobile OTP: Cyanide Or Caffeine For Online Payments? than I saw the following 'kiss-of-death' screen on my laptop <Finextra readers to please scroll to the bottom of the page>:

This happened on the very first occasion that I'd tried to pay my broadband bill online after the new security measure was launched.

Since I've no clue how to reach the right people in the ePayment Gateway company that displayed this message, let me use this open letter to comment on the reasons given by them to explain why my payment failed.

Dear ePG Company:

You: You have used the Back / Forward / Refresh button on your Browser.

Me: In general, whenever I sit in front of my computer, I get into a mad frenzy and keep clicking all buttons that I see on the screen. But, I didn't do that on this occasion. I promise. Check your website clickstream data and you'll know that I'm not lying.  

You: Your cookies may be disabled.
Me: I don't recall you asking for my permission to place cookies on my PC in the first place. In any case, I just finished making another payment from the same laptop, so this can't have anything to do with cookies.

You: Your session has been (sic) expired.

Me: Not by me, for sure.

You: You may be using same browser for different transactions.

Me: Duh? I don't even know how to do that.

You: Your transaction has been timed out due to inactive.

Me: Given my oft-expressed anxiety about failed payments, I'm never more alert than when I attempt online payments (apart from crossing roads, that is). So, if anyone was goofing off at their post, it wasn't me.

Wish I could give you more details but I need to go to the TELCO's office, stand in a long queue and pay the bill before my broadband connection gets disconnected, so you'll have to excuse my brevity. In return, I'll forget that you still owe me an explanation for failing to process my payment.

Sincerely yours,

Back-to-Cash Customer

PS: I notice that every one of your reasons begins with "you" or "your". So much for your faith in your customers. I've known some narcissistic banks in my day (sorry ICICI, that old joke had to come out some day) but you're easily the most self-confident FI I've come across. Hope some of that chutzpah rubs off on your website and keeps it up and running, at least when I visit it next.

PPS: If you can't improve your website's uptime, can you at least clean up the language on it? Or, is that also "as per RBI guidelines"?