I can imagine that would not be much fun, yes! In my case the distance is under half a mile from the exchange and other things had tested OK too. One engineer did say that some work was needed that would involve digging up the road and the report went 'missing' from British Telecom's system.. They tried to claim that it had never existed except that I had already been forwarded a copy of it from the ISP at my request ;)
I am still quite surprised at how untrustworthy the management appear to be there.