[ILUG] Need advice on what to do with my ISP

[imduffy]

Hi, this mailing list was recommended to me somewhere else where I also
posted this same question.
I was hoping to get some advice from you guys.
I have my home broadband connection with Fastcom Broadband, they are a small
company in Sligo http://fastcom.ie we pay €40 a month for a 3mb
upload/download package.

On May 7th I reported an issue with them about packet loss and spiking
pings. This email was ignored and the issue was not dealt with until future
prompting on the 21st of May, by the 27th of May the issue was still
apparent my complaint got the following reply

We have been looking into your issue and are happy that your connection
> falls within the normal tolerances for a contended broadband service.  As
> has been explained in the past we are not providing an un-contended (leased
> line) circuit to your house.   At this point we do not find further reason
> to investigate this case.  However, if you feel our residential service does
> not meet your requirements/expectations, your options are to get your
> connection upgraded to a dedicated (un-contended) circuit, or  to look for
> another provider that may closer meet your requirements.
>
>
>
> Please let us know how you would like to proceed.
>

As you can see they are not very kind towards my issue of packet loss and
was wondering where you would go from here? Unfortunately I cannot switch
provider as there is nobody else in the area offering a package with a good
upload speed and no download limits.
On a side note if any of you would like to explain how contention would
cause packet loss over small samples I'd love to hear it, as I fail to
understand how my ISP figures that one out, to my understanding they are two
different things..

If any of you are interest here is various RRD graphs and MTRs
http://tuts4tech.net/isp-issues/ you can clearly see the amounts of packet
loss and the MTRs clearly show the amount of packet loss over a short
period. 88.151.87.1 is the gateway which no packet loss is recorded from
this would lead me to belive the issue likes firmly with the ISP.

After seeing my ISPs uncaring responce I did raise the issue with comreg who
I have yet to hear back from.

So to conclude, if you were in my case what would you do?

Regards,
Duffy