mixture, I don't know which 2 bit company you deal with
GG,
Suffice to say that either through personal experience, or through helping others, I have dealt with a multitude of ADSL providers.
It's almost always bad news when the call centre monkeys on the phone start reading off a script and asking you to do pointless things, some of which I mentioned earlier.
Yes there are exceptions to the rule, these tend to be smaller providers who do not have large call centre operations .... one excellent example in the UK is Zen Internet who have a wonderful technical support team as do one or two others I could mention. (no, I've got no interest in Zen otherwise than being a happy customer with multiple lines from them and knowing others who are equally happy).
Make no mistake, I'm not having a go at your engineering background .... but you've also got to look at things from an IT point of view too, and generally speaking, when an ADSL line suddenly stops working, in the majority of cases it's not because of contact corrosion or anything else.... becuase you would have likely seen that coming, corrosion doesn't happen overnight .... and if it does, I'd be looking to move house pronto !
