Hate this kind of shit. You're completely at their mercy, too.
It's worse than just that, too. Where I live there isn't any other internet provider. It's these guys or nothing, so threatening to cut the cord on them isn't even a believable threat.
Update: They came out a few minutes after my previous post, worked for more than three hours replacing all kinds of stuff, and then eventually left saying that the problem wasn't fixed but there wasn't anything more they could do. Supposedly someone else is on their way out to see about the issue.
Update 2: It took until after 5pm, but they finally got it fixed. Apparently, they had to go out to the local phone interchange station and do some stuff. No idea what it was, but apparently the problem wasn't in the vicinity of my house.