Still, during the XBL "problems" in 2007 you could generally connect to XBL, download things, play single-player games that used leaderboards, get Achievements, etc. without any issues. Online multiplayer was affected, but it was still possible.
The problems took over two weeks to go away for my account, but it was mostly just the occasional annoying logout and spots of laggy gameplay that bothered me... it was still way better than not being able to connect at all.
Since then, XBL has been rock-solid with no issues whatsoever, for me at least.
I'm not a fanboy, and I'm not going to say anything like "YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR DERP HURRRRRRRRRR," but anyone who's saying "this happens on 360 too" is mistaken.
Hopefully, this'll get fixed soon, and we'll all learn that our credit cards are safe and no data was lost.