Not getting what you pay for

This might sound like an exaggeration, but I promise you that the facts are true and correct.

I have a Telkom ADSL line at home and I pay for a 4Mbps speed as I work from home and this is sufficient for my needs (I also do a fair bit of online gaming at night).

In February 2013 the connection started to be VERY intermittent - it would work fine then suddenly drop me for anywhere between a few second up to a few hours, then it would come back. Every time that the line dropped me my speed also went down when the internet came back up. The speeds would then be between 0.5Mbps - 1.7Mbps. I would then call their call centre (where you are ALWAYS on hold for ages with the exact same recorded message of "due to high call volumes there may be in a long delay in answering your call" no matter what of day you call them).

The call centre representative would then "reset" my ports or "optimize" the line and the problem would magically be fixed - sometimes for a few days, other times the "fix" would not even last an hour.

since that first report in Feb 2013, I have reported this same fault in excess of 50 times, it has been escalated more than 20 times and they have sent technicians to my premises on 14 different occasions. Interestingly, almost every technician had a different theory of what was wrong - but not a single one of them were able to fix the problem. The last person was in fact a supervisor who, although very helpful, explained that I was too far from the exchange and therefore had such a bad connection which the Telkom system would then automatically downgrade to a lower speed to create a more stable connection. (When they however log onto the system with their credentials on my line, they were able to achieve speeds in excess on 20Mbps even though the distance to the exchange remains the same).

Now over and above the fact that this problem is persistent, irritating and very inconvenient due to me working from home, the fact remains that I am paying for a 4Mbps line but in this entire time my average speed has been below 2Mbps which should be a lot cheaper. although a refund would be nice (and I did receive a partial credit for a period when my line was basically down for 2 months non-stop) I just want them to fix the damn problem once and for all without any excuses so I can enjoy the service that I am paying for.