Credit card errors not specific enough

For some reason, your credit card system is rejecting both of my credit cards. I suspect your system is down. But in any case, the error I'm getting is as follows:

Error placing order

An error occurred while placing order, please verify credit card info and try again

That is completely uninformative. If your purchasing system actually provided some INFORMATION as to WHY it failed, I might be able to DO something about it, if I've made a mistake.

Uninformative error messages are evil.