I'll don my corporate hat and say: those are completely unacceptable excuses for poor client communication.
I'd perhaps accept 'I was so deep in the code!' once from a very junior developer, as a learning experience.
To the person that reported a bug, that one report makes or breaks their entire opinion of your organisation. We lost customers because of poor communication, and on the other hand made some very happy repeat-customers even when we had to say 'we can't fix that yet' - but they were in the loop for the whole process and understood why.
I'd perhaps accept 'I was so deep in the code!' once from a very junior developer, as a learning experience.
To the person that reported a bug, that one report makes or breaks their entire opinion of your organisation. We lost customers because of poor communication, and on the other hand made some very happy repeat-customers even when we had to say 'we can't fix that yet' - but they were in the loop for the whole process and understood why.